A short history of The Book of Common Prayer : together with certain papers illustrative of liturgical revision 1878-1892

1549

THE BO

[LLIAM, REED

FROM-THE- LIBRARY-OF
TR1NITYCOLLEGE TORONTO

A SHORT HISTORY

TOGETHER WITH

CERTAIN PAPERS ILLUSTRATIVE OF
LITURGICAL REVISION 1878-1892

WILLIAM REED HUXTINGTOX D. D. D. C. L.

Hector of Grace Church New York

NEW YORK

THOMAS WHITTAKER
2 AND 3 BIBLE HOUSE

45

Copyright, 1893,
THOMAS WHITTAKER.

THE MBK8HON COMPANY PRESS,
RAHWAY, N. J.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

I. A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER :

I. ORIGINS, 3

II. VICISSITUDES 20

II. REVISION OF THE AMERICAN COMMON PRAYER, . 61
III. THE BOOK ANNEXED : ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS, 133
APPENDIX :

I. PERMANENT AND VARIABLE CHARACTERISTICS OF
THE PRAYER BOOK— A SERMON BEFORE REVI
SION, 1878 213

II. THE OUTCOME OF REVISION, 1892, . . .228
III. TABULAR VIEW OF ADDITIONS MADE AT THE

SUCCESSIVE REVISIONS, 1552-1892, . . 235

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

THE opening paper of this collection was originally
read as a lecture before a liturgical class, and is now
published for the first time. The others have appeared
in print from time to time during the movement for
revision. If they have any permanent value, it is
because of their showing, so far as the writer's part in
the matter is concerned, what things were attempted
and what things failed of accomplishment. Should they
serve as contributory to some future narrative of the
revision, the object of their publication will have been
accomplished. So much has been said as to the poverty
of our gains on the side of " enrichment," as compared,
with what has been secured in the line of " flexibility,"
that it has seemed proper to append to the volume a
COMPARATIVE TABLE detailing the additions of liturgi
cal matter made to the Common Prayer at the succes
sive revisions. W. R. H.

NEW YORK, Christmas, 1892.

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BOOK OF
COMMON PRAYER.

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BOOK OF
COMMON PRAYER.

I.

ORIGINS.

LITURGICAL worship, understood in the largest sense
the phrase can bear, means divine service rendered in
accordance with an established form. Of late years
there has been an attempt made among purists to con
fine the word " liturgy " to the office entitled in the
Prayer Book, T7ie Order for the Administration of the
Lord's Supper or Holy Communion.

This restricted and specialized interpretation of a fa
miliar word may serve the purposes of technical scholar
ship, for undoubtedly there is much to be said in favor
of the narro\ved signification as we shall see ; but unless
English literature can be rewritten, plain people who
draw their vocabulary from standard authors will go on
calling service-books " liturgies" regardless of the fact
that they contain many things other than that one office
which is entitled to be named by eminence the Liturgy.
" This Convention," write the fathers of the American
Episcopal Church in the Ratification printed on the
fourth page of the Prayer Book, " having in their pres
ent session set forth a Book of Common Prayer and
other rites and ceremonies of the Church, do hereby es-

4 A SHORT HISTORY OF

tablish the said book ; and they declare it to be the
Liturgy of this Church."

For the origin of liturgy thus broadly defined we have
to go a long way back ; beyond the Prayer Book, be
yond the Mass-book, beyond the ancient Sacramentaries,
yes, beyond the synagogue worship, beyond the temple
worship, beyond the tabernacle worship; in fact I am dis
posed to think that, logically, we should be unable to stop
short until we had reached the very heart of man itself,
that dimly discerned groundwork we call human nature,
and had discovered there those two instincts, the one of
worship and the other of gregariousness, from whence all
forms of common prayer have sprung. Where three or
two assemble for the purposes of supplication, some form
must necessarily be accepted if they are to pray in
unison. When the disciples came to Jesus begging him
that he would teach them how to pray, he gave them,
not twelve several forms, though doubtless James's
special needs differed from John's and Simon's from
Jtide's — he gave them, not twelve, but one. " When ye
pray," was his answer, " say Our Father." That was
the beginning of Christian Common Prayer. Because
we are men we worship, because we are fellow-men our
worship must have form.

But waiving this last analysis of all which carries
us across the whole field of history at a leap, it becomes
necessary to seek for liturgical beginnings by a more
plodding process.

If we take that manual of worship with which as
English-speaking Christians we are ourselves the most
familiar, the Book of Common Prayer, and allow it to fall
naturally apart, as a bunch of flowers would do if the

THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. 5

string were cut, we discover that in point of fact we
have, as in the case of the Bible, many books in one.
We have scarcely turned the title-page, for instance,
before we come upon a ritual of daily worship, an order
for Morning' Prayer and an order for Evening Prayer,
consisting in the main of Psalms, Scripture Lessons,
Antiphonal Versicles, and Collects. Appended to this we
find a Litany or General Supplication and a collection
of special prayers.

Mark an interval here, and note that we have com
pleted the first volume of our liturgical library. Next,
we have a sacramental ritual, entitled, The Order for
the Administration of the Lord's Supper or Holy Com
munion, ingeniously interwoven by a system of appro
priate prayers and New Testament readings with the
Sundays and holydays of the year. This gives us our
second volume. Then follow numerous offices which we
shall find it convenient to classify under two heads,
namely : those which may be said by a bishop or by a
presbyter, and those that may be said by a bishop only.
Under the former head come the baptismal offices, the
Order for the Burial of the Dead, and the like ; under
the latter, the services of Ordination and Confirmation
and the Form of Consecration of a Church or Chapel.

In the Church of England as it existed before the
Reformation, these four volumes, as I have called them,
were distinct and recognized realities. Each had its title
and each its separate use. The name of the book of daily
services was The Breviary. The name of the book used
in the celebration of the Holy Communion was The Missal.
The name of the book of Special Offices was The Ritual.
The name of the book of such offices as could be used

6 A SHORT HISTORY OF

by a bishop only was Tlie Pontifical. It was one of the
greatest of the achievements of the English reformers
that they succeeded in condensing, after a practical
fashion, these four books, or, to speak more accurately,
the first three of them, Breviary, Missal, and Ritual, into
one. The Pontifical, or Ordinal, they continued as a sep
arate book, although it soon for the sake of convenience
became customary in England, as it has always been
customary here, for Prayer Book and Ordinal to be
stitched together by the binders into a single volume.
Popularly speaking the Prayer Book is the entire volume
one purchases under that name from the bookseller, but
accurately speaking the Book of Common Prayer ends
where The Form and Manner of Making, Ordaining,
and Consecrating Bishops, Priests, and Deacons begins.
" Finis" should be written after the Psalter, as indeed
from the Prayer Book's Table of Contents plainly appears.

Setting aside now, for the present, that portion of the
formularies which corresponds to the Ritual and Pon
tifical of the mediaeval Church, I proceed to speak rap
idly of the antecedents of Breviary and Missal. Whence
came they ? And how are we to account for their being
sundered so distinctly as they are ?

They came, so some of the most thoughtful of litur
gical students are agreed, from a source no less remote
than the Temple of Solomon, and they are severed, to
speak figuratively, by a valley not unlike that which in
our thoughts divides the Mount of Beatitudes from the
Hill of Calvary.

In that memorable building to which reference was
just made, influential over the destinies of our race as
no other house of man's making ever was, there went

THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. 7

on from day to day these two things, psalmody and
sacrifice. Peace-offering, burnt-offering, sin-offering,
the morning oblation, and the evening oblation — these
with other ceremonies of a like character went to make
what we know as the sacrificial ritual of the temple.

But this was not all. It would appear that there were
other services in the temple over and above those that
could stricthr be called sacrificial. The HebreAv Psalter,
the hymn-book of that early day, contains much that
was evidently intended by the writers for temple use,
and even more that could be easily adapted to such use.
And although there is no direct evidence that in Solo
mon's time forms of prayer other than those associated
with sacrificial rites were in use, yet when we find men
tion in the New Testament of people going up to the
temple of those later days " at the hour of prayer," it
seems reasonable to infer that the custom was an ancient
one, and that from the beginning of the temple's history
forms of worship not strictly speaking sacrificial had
been a stated feature of the ritual. But whether in the
temple or not, certainly in the synagogues, which after
the return from the captivity sprang up all over the
Jewish world, services composed of prayers, of psalms,
and of readings from the law and the prophets were of
continual occurrence. Therefore we may safely say
that witli these two forms of divine service, the sacrifi
cial and the simply devotional and didactic, the apostles,
the founders of the Christian Church, had been familiar
from their childhood. They were at home in both
synagogue and temple. They knew by sight the ritual
of the altar, and by ear the ritual of the choir. They
were accustomed to the spectacle of the priest offering the

A SHORT HISTORY OF

victim ; they were used to hearing the singers chant the
psalms.

We see thus why it is that the public worship of the
Church should have come down to us in two great lines,
why there should be a tradition of eucharistic worship
and, parallel to this, a tradition of daily prayer ; for as
the one usage links itself, in a sense, to the sacrificial
system of God's ancient people and has in it a sugges
tion of the temple worship, so the other seems to show a
continuity with what went on in those less pretentious
sanctuaries which had place in all the cities and villages
of Judea, and indeed wherever, throughout the Roman
world, Jewish colonists were to be found. The earliest
Christian disciples having been themselves Hebrews,
nothing could have been more natural than their mould
ing the worship of the new Church in general accord
ance with the models that had stood before their eyes
from childhood in the old. The Psalms were sung in the
synagogues according to a settled principle. We can
not wonder, then, that the Psalter should have continued
to be what in fact it had always been, the hymn-book of
the Church. Moreover, they had in the synagogue
besides their psalmody a system of Bible readings, con
fined, of course, to the Old Testament Scriptures. This
is noted in the observation that fell from Simon Peter,
at the first Council of the Church, " Moses of old time
hath in every city them that preach him, being read in
the synagogue every Sabbath day." Scripture lessons,
therefore, would be no novelty.

We gather also from the New Testament, not to
speak of other authorities, that in the apostolic days
people were familiar with what were known as " hours

THE BOOK OF COMMON 1'RAYEE. '9

of prayer." There were particular times in the day,
that is to say, which were held to be especially ap
propriate for worship. " Peter and John went up to
gether into the temple at the hour of prayer, being the
ninth hour." Again, at Joppa, we find the former of
these two apostles going up upon the house-top to pray
at "the sixth hour." Long before this David had men
tioned morning and evening and noon as fitting hours
of prayer, and one psalmist, in his enthusiasm, had even
gone so far as to declare seven times a day to be not too
often for giving God thanks. There was also the prec
edent of Daniel opening his windows toward Jeru
salem three times a day. As the love for order and
system grew year by year stronger in the Christian
Church, the laws that govern ritual Avould be likely to
become more stringent, and so very probably it came to
pass. For aught we know to the contrary, the observ
ance of fixed hours of prayer was a matter of voluntary
action with the Christians of the first age. There was,
as we say, no " shall " about it. But when the
founders of the monastic orders came upon the scene a
fixed rule took the place of simple custom, and what
had been optional became mandatory. By the time we
reach the mediaeval period evolution has had its perfect
work, and we find in existence a scheme of daily ser
vice curiously and painfully elaborate. The mediaeval
theologians were very fond of classifying things by
sevens. In the symbolism of Holy Scripture seven ap
pears as the number of perfection, it being the aggre
gate of three, the number of Deity, and four, the number
of the earth. Accordingly we find in the theology of
those times seven sacraments, seven deadly sins^ seven

10 A SHORT HISTORY OF

contrary virtues, seven works of mercy, and also seven
hours of prayer. These seven hours were known as
Matins, Prime, Tierce, Sext, Nones, Vespers, and Com-
plene. The theory of the hours of prayer was that at
each one of them a special office of devotion was to be
said. Beginning before sunrise with matins there was
to be daily a round of services at stated intervals cul
minating at bedtime in that which, as its name indi
cated, filled out the series, Complene. To what extent
this ideal scheme of devotion was ever carried out in
practice it is difficult positively to say.

Probably in the monastic and conventual life of the
severer orders there was an approximation to a punctual
observance of the hours as they successively arrived.
Possibly the modern mind fails to do full justice to the
conception of worship on which this system was based.
Those principles of devotion of which the rosary is the
visible symbol do not easily commend themselves to us.
They have about them a suggestion of mechanism.
They remind us of the Buddhist praying wheel, and
seem to put the Church in the attitude of expecting to
be heard for her " much speaking."

Doubtless many a pure, courageous spirit fought the
good fight of faith successfully in spite of all this weight
of outward observances ; but in the judgment of the
wiser heads among English churchmen, the time had
come, by the middle of the sixteenth century, when this
complicated armor must either be greatly lightened or
else run the risk of being cast aside altogether. Let
Cranmer tell his own story. This is what he says in
the Preface to the First Book of Ed \vard VI. as to the
ritual grievances of the times. The passage is worth

THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. 11

listening to if only for the quaintness of its strong and
wholesome English :

" There was never anything by the wit of man so well
devised or so surely established which, in continuance
of time, hath not been corrupted, as, among other things,
it may plainly appear by the common prayer, in the
Church, commonly called divine service. The first
original and ground whereof, if a man would search
out by the ancient fathers, he shall find that the
same was not ordained but of a good purpose, and
for a great advancement of godliness, for they so
ordered the matter that all the whole Bible, or the
greatest part thereof, should be read over once in the
year. . . But these many years past this godly and de
cent order of the ancient fathers hath been so altered,
broken, and neglected by planting in uncertain stories,
legends, responds, verses, vain repetitions, commemora
tions, and synodals that commonly, when any book of
the Bible was begun, before three or four chapters were
read out all the rest were unread. And in this sort the
Book of Esaie Avas begun in Advent, and the Book of
Genesis in Septuagesima, but they were only begun and
never read through. . . And moreover, whereas St.
Paul would have such language spoken to the people in
the Churcli as they might understand and have profit
by hearing the same, the service in this Church of Eng
land (these many years) hath been read in Latin to the
people, which they understood not, so that they have
heard with their ears only, and their hearts, spirit, and
mind have not been edified thereby. . . Moreover, the
number and hardness of the rules called the Pie, and
the manifold changings of the service was the cause

12 A SHOKT HISTORY OF

that to turn the Book only was so hard and intricate a
matter that many times there was more business to find
out what should be read than it was to read it when
it was found out. These inconveniences therefore con
sidered, here is set forth such an order whereby the same
shall be redressed."

As an illustration of what Cranmer meant by his
curious phrase, " planting in uncertain stories," take the
following Lessons quoted by Dr. Neale in his Essays on
Liturglology :

"Besides the commemoration of saints," writes this
distinguished antiquarian, "there are in certain local
calenders notices of national events connected with the
well-being of the Church. Thus, in the Parisian
Breviary, we have on the eighteenth of August a com
memoration of the victory of Philip the Fair in
Flanders, A. D. 1304." Here is the fourth of the ap
pointed lessons : " Philip the Fair, King of the French,
in the year 1304, about the feast of St. Mary Magdalene,
having set forth with his brothers Charles and Louis and
a large army into Flanders, pitched his tent near Mons,
where was a camp of the rebel Flemings. But when, on
the eighteenth of August, which was the Tuesday after
the Assumption of St. Mary, the French had from morn
ing till evening stood on the defence, and were resting
themselves at nightfall, the enemy, by a sudden attack,
rushed on the camp with such fury that the body-guard
had scarce time to defend him.

"Response. Come from Lebanon, my spouse ; come,
and thou shalt be crowned. The odor of thy sweet oint
ments is above all perfumes. Versicle, The righteous
judge shall give a drown of righteousness."

THE BOOK OF COMMON PEAYEE. 13

Then, after this short interlude of snatches from Holy
Scripture, there follows the Fifth Lesson : "At the
beginning of the fight the life of the king was in great
danger, but shortly after, his troops crowding together
from all quarters to his tent, where the battle was
sharpest, obtained an illustrious victory over the
enemy " — and more of this sort until all of a sudden we
come upon the Song of Solomon again. " V. Thou art
all fair, my love ; come from Lebanon. ./?. They that
have not defiled their garments, they shall walk with me
in white, for they are worthy."

Is not Cranmer's contemptuous mention of these un
certain legends and vain repetitions amply justified ?
And can we be too thankful to the sturdy champions of
the Reformation, who in the face of no little opposition
and by efforts scarcely appreciated to-day, cut us loose
from all responsibility for such solemn nonsense ?

There are some who feel aggrieved that chapters from
the Apocrypha should have found admission to our new
lectionary, and there are even those who think that of
the canonical Scriptures, passages more edifying than
certain of those appointed to be read might have been
chosen, but what would the}' think if they were com
pelled to hear the minister at the lecturn say : " Here
beginneth the first chapter of the Adventures of Philip
the Fair " ?

But the reformers, happily, were not discouraged by
the portentous front of wood, hay, and stubble which the
liturgical edifice of their day presented to the eye.
They felt convinced that there were also to be found
mixed in with the building material gold, silver, and
precious stones, and for these they determined to make

14 A SHORT HISTORY OF

diligent search, resolved most of all that the foundation
laid should be Jesus Christ. This system of canonical
hours, they argued, this seven-fold office of daily prayer
is all very beautiful in theory, but it never can be made
what in fact it never in the past has been, a practicable
thing. Let us be content if we can do so much as win
people to their devotions at morning and at night.
With this object in view Cranmer and his associates
subjected the services of the hours to a process of com
bination and condensation. The Offices for the first
three hours they compressed into An Order for Daily
Morning Prayer, or, as it was called in Edward's first
Book, An Order for Matins, and the Offices for the
last two hours, namely, Vespers and Coinplene, they
made over into An Order for Daily Evening Prayer,
or, as it was named in Edward's first Book, An Order
for Evensong.

These two formularies, the Order for Matins and
the Order for Evensong, make the core and substance
of our present daily offices. But the tradition of daily
prayer is only one of the two great devotional heritages
of the Church. With the destruction of the temple
by the Roman soldiery, the sacrificial ritual of the
Jewish Church came to a sudden end ; but it was not
God's purpose that the memory of sacrifice should fade
out of men's minds or that the thought of sacrifice
should be banished from the field of worship. Years
before the day when the legionaries of Titus marched
amid flame and smoke, into the falling sanctuary
of an out-worn faith, one who was presently to
die upon a cross had taken bread, had blessed it and
broken it, and giving it to certain followers gathered

THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. 15

about him, had said, " Take, eat ; this is my body, which
is given for you : this do in remembrance of me." Like
wise also he had taken the cup after supper, saying,
" This cup is the New Testament in my blood which is
shed for you."

Certainly there must be a relation of cause and effect
between this scene and the fact, which is a fact, that
the most ancient fragments of primitive Christian wor
ship now discoverable are forms for the due commemo
ration of the sacrifice of the death of Christ.

These venerable monuments seem to exclaim as we
decipher them : "Even so, Lord, it is done as thou
didst say." " Thy name, O Lord, endureth forever and
so doth thy memorial from generation to generation."
Of the references to Christian worship discoverable in
documents later than the New Testament Scriptures
there are three that stand out with peculiar promi
nence, namely, the lately discovered Teaching of the
Twelve Apostles, placed by some authorities as early as
the first half of the second century; the famous letter
of Pliny to the Emperor Trajan, a writing of the same
period ; and the Apology or Defence addressed by Justin
Martyr to Antoninus Pius about the year 140 after
Christ. The noteworthy fact in connection with these
passages is that of the three, two certainly, and probably
the third also, refer directly to the Holy Communion.
In the Teaching we have a distinct sketch of a
eucharistic service with three of the prescribed prayers
apparently given in full. In Justin Martyr's account,
the evidence of a definitely established liturgical form
is perhaps less plain, but nothing that he says would
appear to be irreconcilable with the existence of a

16 A SHORT HISTORY OF

more or less elastic ritual order. Whether he does or
does not intend to describe extemporaneous prayer as
forming one feature of the eucharistic worship of the
Christians of his time depends upon the translation we
give to a single word in his narrative. Later on in the
life of the Church, though by just how much later is a
difficult point of scholarship, we are brought in contact
with a number of formularies, all of them framed for
the uses of eucharistical worship, all of them, that is to
say, designed to perpetuate the commandment, "This
do in remembrance of me," and all of them preserving,
no matter in what part of the world they may be found,
a certain structural uniformity. These are the primi
tive liturgies, as they are called, the study of which has
in late years attained almost to the dignity of a science.
As to the exact measure of antiquity that ought to be
accorded to these venerable documents the authorities
differ and probably will always differ. Dr. Neale's en
thusiasm carried him so far that he was persuaded and
sought to persuade others of the existence of liturgical
quotations in the writings of St. Paul. This hypothesis
is at the present time generally rejected by sober-minded
scholars. Perhaps " the personal equation " enters
equally into the conclusions of those who assign a very
late origin to the liturgies, pushing them along as far as
the sixth or seventh century. If one happens to have
a rooted dislike for prescribed forms of worship, and
believes them in his heart to be both unscriptural and
unspiritual, it will be the most natural thing in the world
for him to disparage whatever evidence makes in favor
of the early origin of liturgies. Hammond is sensible
when he says in the Preface to his valuable work entitled

THE BOOK OP COMMON PKAYER. 17

Liturgies Eastern and Western, "I have assumed an
intermediate position between the views of those on the
one hand who hold that the liturgies had assumed a
recognized and fixed form so early as to be quoted in the
Epistles to the Corinthians and Hebrews . . . and of
those, on the other, who because there are some palpable
interpolations and marks of comparatively late date in
some of the texts, assert broadly that they are all untrust
worthy and valueless as evidence. This view I venture
to think," he adds, " equally uncritical and groundless
with the former."

To sum up, the argument in behalf of an apostolic
origin for the Christian Liturgy may be compactly
stated thus : The very earliest monuments of Christian
worship that we possess are rituals of thanksgiving,
having direct reference to the sacrifice of the death of
Christ. Going back from these to the New Testament
we find there the narrative of the institution of the Holy
Communion by Christ himself, and in connection with
it the command, " This do in remembrance of me." It
is, I submit, a reasonable inference that the liturgies in
the main fairly represent what it was in the mind of the
apostle to recognize and establish as proper Christian
worship. I do not call it demonstration, I call it rea
sonable inference. There is a striking parallelism be
tween the argument for liturgical worship and the
argument for episcopacy. In both cases we take the
ground that continuity existed between the life of the
Church as we find it a hundred years after the last of
the apostles had gone to his rest and the life of the
Church as it is pictured in the New Testament.

That there were many changes during the interval

18 A SHORT HISTOEY OP

must no doubt be granted, but we say that if those
changes were serious ones affecting great principles of
belief or order, those who maintain that such a hidden
revolution took place are bound to bring positive evi
dence to the fact. This history of the Church during
the second century has been likened with more of inge
nuity than of poetical beauty to the passing of a train
through a railway tunnel.

We see the train enter, we see it emerge, but its
movement while inside the tunnel is concealed from us.
Similarly we may say that we see with comparative dis
tinctness the Christian Church of the Apostolic Age, and
we see with comparative distinctness the Church of the
Age of Cyprian and Origen, but with respect to the inter
val separating the two periods we are not indeed wholly,
but, we are, it must be confessed, very largely ignorant.
And yet as in the case of the tunnel we confidently
affirm an identity between what we saw go in and what
we see coming out, so with the doctrine, discipline, and
worship of the Church, the usages of the third century,
we argue, are probably in their leading features what
the usages of the first century were. If reason to the
contrary can be given, well and good ; but in the ab
sence of countervailing testimony we abide by our
inference, holding it to be sound.

I am far from wishing to maintain that these consid
erations bind liturgical worship upon the Christian
Church as a matter of obligation for all time. It might
be argued, and I think with great force, that liturgical
worship having been universal throughout the ancient
world, heathen as well as Jewish, the apostles and
fathers of the Christian Church judged it unwise to make

THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. 19

any departure at the outset from a custom so invariable,
trusting it to the spirit of the new religion to work out
freer and less formal methods of approaching God
through Christ in the times to come. This, I confess,
strikes me as a perfectly legitimate line of reasoning
and one which is strengthened rather than weakened by
what we have seen happen in Christendom since the
sixteenth century. Great bodies of Christians have for
a period of some three hundred years been worshipping
Almighty God in non-liturgical ways, and have not been
left without witness that their service was acceptable
to the Divine Majesty. Moreover, the fact that absolute
rigidity in liturgical use never was insisted upon in
any age of the Church until the English passed their Act
of Uniformity, makes in the saine direction. And yet
even after these allowances have been made, there re
mains a considerable amount of solid satisfaction for
those who do adhere to the liturgical method, in the
thought that they are in the line which is apparently
the line of continuity, and that their interpretation of
the apostolic purpose with respect to worship is the
interpretation that has been generally received in
Christendom as far back as we can go.

20 A SHORT HISTORY OF

II.

VICISSITUDES.

CERTAIN of the necromancers of the far East are said
to have the power of causing a tree to spring up, spread
its branches, blossom, and bear fruit before the eyes of
the lookers-on within the space of a few moments.

Modern liturgies have sometimes been brought into
being by a process as extemporaneous as this, but not
such was the genesis of the Book of Common Prayer.

There are at least eight forms under which the
Prayer Book has been from time to time authoritatively
set forth — five English, one Scottish, one Irish, and one
American ; so that, if we would be accurate, we are
bound to specify, when we speak of " The Prayer Book,"
which of several Prayer Books we have in mind.

The truth is, there exists in connection with every
thing that grows, whether it be plant; animal, or build
ing, a certain mystery like that which attaches to what,
in the case of a man, we call personal identit}7". Which
is the true, the actual Napoleon ? Is it the Napoleon of
the Directory, or the Napoleon of the Consulate, or the
Napoleon of the Empire? At each epoch we discern a
different phase of the man's character, and yet we are
compelled to acknowledge, in the face of all the vari
ations, that wre have to do with one and the same
man.

But just as a ship acquires, as we may say, her personal
identity when she is launched and named, even though

THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. 21

there may be a great deal yet to be done in the way of
finishing and furnishing before she can be pronounced sea
worthy, so it is with a book that is destined to undergo
repeated revision and reconstruction, it does acquire, on
the day when it is first published, and first given a dis
tinctive title, a certain character the losing of which
would be the loss of personal identity. There is many an
old cathedral that might properly enough be called a re-
edited book in stone. Norman architecture, Early Eng
lish, Decorated, and Perpendicular, all are there, and yet
one dominant thought pervades the building. Notwith
standing the many times it has been retouched, the
fabric still expresses to the eye the original creative
purpose of the designer ; there is no possibility of our
mistaking Salisbury for York or Peterborough for
London.

The first Book of Common Prayer was built up of
blocks that for the most part had been previously used
in other buildings, but the resulting structure exhibited,
from the very moment it received a name, such distinct
and unmistakable characteristics as have guaranteed it
personal identity through more than three hundred
years. Hence, while it is in one sense true that there
are no fewer than eight Books of Common Prayer, it is
in another sense equally true that the Book of Common
Prayer is one.

An identity of purpose, of scope, and of spirit shows
itself in all its various forms under which the book
exists, so that whether we are speaking of the First
Prayer Book of King Edward the Sixth, or of the book
adopted by the Church of Ireland after its disestablish
ment, or of the American Book of Common Prayer,

22 A SHORT HISTORY OP

what we have in mind is, in a very real and deep sense,
one and the same thing.

Let us proceed now to a rapid survey of the facts con
nected with the first issue of the Common Prayer.

For a period long anterior to the Reformation there
had been in use among the English brief books of devo
tion known as " primers," written in the language of the
people. The fact that the public services of the Church
were invariably conducted in the Latin tongue made
a resort to such expedients as this necessary, unless
religion was to be reserved as the private property of
ecclesiastics.

By a curious process of evolution the primer, from
having been in mediaeval times a book wholly religious
and devotional, has come to be in our day a book wholly
secular and educational. We associate it with Noah
Webster and the Harper Brothers. The New England
Primer of the Puritans, with its odd jumble of piety
and the three R's, marks a point of transition from the
ancient to the modern type.

But this by the way. The primer we are now con
cerned with is the devotional primer of the times just
previous to the Reformation. This, as a rule, contained
prayers, the Belief, the Ave Maria, a litany of some sort,
the Ten Commandments, and whatever else there might
be that in the mind of the compiler came under the head
of " things which a Christian ought to know." There
were three of these primers set forth during the reign
of Henry the Eighth, one in 1535, one in 1539, and one
in 1545. During the space that intervened between
the publication of the second and that of the third of
these primers, appeared " The Litany and Suffrages," a

THE BOOK OF COMMON PKAYER. 23

formulary compiled, as is generally believed, by Cran-
mer, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, and in sub
stance identical with the Litany \ve use to-day. This
Litany of 1544 has been properly described as "the
precursor and first instalment of the English Book of
Common Prayer." It was the nucleus or centre of
crystallization about which the other constituent portions
of our manual of worship were destined to be grouped.
A quaint exhortation was prefixed to this Litany, in
which it was said to have been set forth " because the
not .understanding the prayers and suffrages formerly
used caused that the people came but slackly to the pro
cessions." Besides the primers and the Litany, there
were printed in Henry's reign various editions of a book
of Epistles and Gospels in English. There was also
published a Psalter in Latin and English.

All this looked rather to the edification of individual
Christians in their private devotional life than to the
public worship of the Church, but we are not to suppose
that meanwhile the larger interests of the whole body
were forgotten. So early as in the year 1542, Convo
cation, which according to the Anglican theory stands
toward the Church in the same attitude that Parliament
holds to the State, appointed a Committee of Eight to
review and correct the existing service-books. We
know very little as to the proceedings of this committee,
but that something was done, and a real impulse given to
liturgical revision, is evidenced by the fact that at a
meeting of Convocation held soon after King Henry's
death a resolution prevailed " That the books of the
Bishops and others who by the command of the Convo
cation have labored in examining, reforming, and

24 A SHORT HISTORY OF

publishing the divine service, may be produced and
laid before the examination of this house."

The next important step in the process we are study
ing was the publication by authority in the early spring
of 1548, of an Order of the Communion, as it was called,
a formulary prepared by Cranmer to enable the priest,
after having consecrated the elements in the usual
manner, to distribute them to the people with the sen
tences of delivery spoken in English. The priest, that
is to say, was to proceed with the service of the Mass as
usual in the Latin tongue, but after he had himself
received the bread and the wine, he was to proceed to a
service of Communion for the people in a speech they
could understand.

Almost everything in this tentative document, as we
may call it, was subsequently incorporated in the Office
of the Holy Communion as we are using it to-day.

We have, then, as an abiding result of the liturgical
experiments made in anticipation of the actual setting
forth of an authoritative Prayer Book, the Litany and
this Order of the Communion.

The time was now ripe for something better and more
complete ; a new king was upon the throne, and one
whose counsellors were better disposed toward change
than ever Henry had been. The great movement we
know under the name of the Reformation touched the
life of the Christian Church in every one of its three
great departments — doctrine, discipline, and worship.
In Henry's mind, however, the question appears to have
been almost exclusively one of discipline or polity. His
quarrel was not with the accepted theological errors of
his day, for as Defender of the Faith he covered some

THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYEK. 25

of the worst of them with his shield. Neither was he
ill-disposed toward the methods and usages of public
worship so far as we can judge. His quarrel first, last,
and always was Avith a certain rival claimant of power,
whose pretended authority he was determined to drive
out of the realm, to wit, the Pope. But while it was
thus with Henry, it was far otherwise with many of the
more thoughtful and devout among his theologians, and
when the restraint that had been laid on them was
removed by the king's death, they welcomed the oppor
tunity to apply to doctrine and worship the same
reforming touch that had already remoulded polity.

An enlarged Committee of Convocation sat at Wind
sor in the summer of 1548, and as a result there was
finally set forth, and ordered to be put into use on Whit
sunday, 1549, what has become known in history as the
" First Prayer Book of Edward VI."

To dwell on those features of the First Book that
have remained unaltered to the present day would be
superfluous ; I shall therefore, in speaking of it, confine
myself to the distinctive and characteristic points in
which it differs from the Prayer Books that have suc
ceeded it.

It is Avorthy of note that in the title page of the First
Book there is a clear distinction draAvn betAveen the
Church Universal, or what AVC call in the Te Deum
"the holy Church throughout all the world," and that
particular Church to Avhich King Edward's subjects, in
virtue of their being Englishmen, belonged. The book
is said to be " the Book of the Common Prayer and
administration of the Sacraments and other Rites and
Ceremonies of THE CHURCH, after the use of the Church

26 A SHORT HISTORY OF

of England." " THE CHURCH " is recognized as being a
larger and, perhaps, older thing than the CHURCH OF
EXGLAND, while at the same time it is intimated that
only through such use of these same prayers and sacra
ments as the English Church ordains and authorizes can
English folk come into communion with the great
family of believers spread over the whole earth.

The Preface is a singularly racy piece of English, in
which with the utmost plainness of speech the compilers
give their reasons for having dealt with the old services
as they have done. This reappears in the English
Prayer Book of the present day under the title " Con
cerning the Service of the Church," and so described is
placed after the Preface written in 1662 by the Revisers
of the Restoration.

The Order for Daily Morning Prayer, as we name it,
is called in Edward's First Book " An Order for Matins
daity through the year." Similarly, what we call the
Order for Da,i\y Evening Prayer was styled "An Order
for Evensong." These beautiful names, "Matins "and
" Evensong," which it is a great pity to have lost, for
surely there is nothing superstitious about them, disap
peared from the book as subsequently revised, and save
in the Lectionary of the Church of England have no
present recognition. One of them, however, Evensong,
seems to be coming very generally into colloquial use.
The Order for Matins began with the Lord's Prayer.
Then, after the familiar versicles. still in use, including
two that have no place in our American book, " 0 God,
make speed to save me. O Lord, make haste to help
me," there followed in full the 95th Psalm, a portion of
which is known to us as the Venite. From this point

THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. 27

the service proceeded, as in the English Prayer Book of
to-day, through the Collect for Grace, where it came to
an end. The structure of Evensong was similar, begin
ning with the Lord's Prayer and ending, as our shortened
Evening Prayer now does, with the Collect for Aid
against Perils. Then followed the Athanasian Creed,
and immediately afterward came the Introits, Collects,
Epistles, and Gospels.

These Introits, so-called, were psalms appointed to be
sung when the priest was about to begin the Holy Com
munion. They had been an ancient feature of divine
service, but were dropped from the subsequent books as
a required feature of the Church's worship.

The title of the Communion Service in Edward's First
Book is as follows : " The Supper of the Lord and the
Holy Communion commonly called the Mass." Imme
diately after the Prayer for Purity — i. <?., in the place
where we have the Ten Commandments, comes the
Gloria in Excelsls. The service then proceeds very
much as with us, except that the Prayer for the Church
Militant and the Consecration Prayer are welded into
one, and the Prayer of Humble Access given a place
immediately before the reception of the elements. I
note, in passing, certain phrases and sentences that are
peculiar to the Communion Office of the First Book, as,
for instance, this from the Prayer for the whole state of
Christ's Church : " And here we do give unto thee most
high praise and hearty thanks for the wonderful grace
and virtue declared in all thy saints from the beginning
of the world, and chiefly in the most glorious and blessed
Virgin Mary, Mother of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord
and God, and in the holy patriarchs, prophets, apostles,

28 A SHORT HISTORY OF

and martyrs, whose examples, O Lord, and steadfast
ness in thy faith and keeping thy holy commandments
grant us to follow. We commend unto thy mercy, O
Lord, all other thy servants which are departed hence
from us with the sign of faith and do now rest in the
sleep of peace. Grant unto them, Ave beseech thee, thy
mercy and everlasting peace, and that at the day of the
general resurrection we and all they which be of the
mystical body of thy Son may altogether be set on his
right hand."

And this from the closing portion of the Consecration :
"Yet we beseech thee to accept this our bounden duty
and service, and command these our prayers and sup
plications by the ministry of thy holy angels to be
brought up into thy holy tabernacle before the sight of
thy divine majesty."

Following close upon the Communion Service came
the Litany, differing very little from what we have
to-day, save in the memorable petition, " From the
tyranny of the Bishop of Rome and all his detestable
enormities, good Lord deliver us."

The Baptismal Offices of the First Book contain cer
tain unique features. The sign of the cross is ordered
to be made on the child's breast as well as on his fore
head. There is a form of exorcism said over the infant
in which the unclean spirit is commanded to come out
and to depart. There is also the giving of the " Crisome "
or white vesture as a symbol of innocence. " Take this
white vesture for a token of the innocency which by
God's grace in this holy sacrament of Baptism is given
unto thee, and for a sign whereby thou art admonished,
so long as thou livest, to give thyself to innocency of

THE BOOK OF COMMON PKAYEE. 29

living, that after this transitory life thou mayest be par
taker of the life everlasting."

The Catechism in Edward VI. First Book, as in the
subsequent books down to 1662, is made a part of the
Confirmation Office, although it does not clearly appear
that the children were expected to say it as a preliminary
to the" service.

The Office for the Visitation of the Sick contains pro
vision for private confession and absolution, and also
directs that the priest shall anoint the sick man with oil
if he be desired to do so.

The Office for the Communion of the Sick allows the
practice of what is called the reservation of the elements,
but contains also, be it observed, that rubric which has
held its place through all the changes the Praj'er Book
has undergone, where we are taught that if the sick man
by any "just impediment fail to receive the sacrament
of Christ's body and blood, the curate shall instruct him
that if he do truly repent him of his sins and steadfastly
believe that Jesus Christ hath suffered death upon the
cross for him ... he doth eat and drink the body and
blood of our Saviour Christ, profitably to his soul's health
although he do not receive the sacrament with his mouth."

The Burial Office contains a recognition of prayer for
the dead, but except in the matter of the arrangement
of the parts differs but little from the service still in
use. A special Introit, Collect, Epistle, and Gospel are
appointed " for the Celebration of the Holy Communion
when there is a Burial of the Dead."

A Commination Office for Ash-Wednesday, substan
tially identical with that still in use in the Church of
England, concludes the book.

30 A SHORT HISTORY OF

The First Prayer Book of King Edward the Sixth,
memorable as it was destined to become, proved, so far
as actual use was concerned, but short-lived. It became
operative, as we have seen, on Whitsunday, 1549, but
it was soon evident that while the new services went too
far in the direction of reform to please the friends of
the ancient order of things, they did not go far enough
to meet the wishes of the reforming party.

Before the year was out no fewer than three trans
lations of the Liturgy into Latin had been undertaken
with a view to informing the Protestant divines of the
Continent as to what their English colleagues were
doing. " There was already within the Church " (of
England), writes Card well, in his comparison of Edward's
two books, "a party, though probably not numerous,
which espoused the peculiar sentiments of Calvin ; there
were others, and Cranmer, it appears, had recently been
one of them, adhering strictly to the opinions of Luther ;
there were many, and those among the most active and
the most learned, who adopted the views of Bullinger
and the theologians of Zurich ; there was a still larger
body anxious to combine all classes of Protestants under
one general confession, and all these, though with dis
tinct objects and different degrees of impatience, looked
forward to a revision of the Liturgy, to bring it more
completely into accordance with their own sentiments."

As a result of the agitation thus vividly pictured by
Cardwell, there came forth in 1552 the book known as
the Second Prayer Book of King Edward VI., a work of
the very greatest interest, for the reason that it was des
tined to become the basis of all future revisions. Whit
sunday, 1549, was the day when the First Book began

THE BOOK OP COMMON PRAYER. 31

to be used. The Feast of All Saints, 1552, was the date
officially appointed for the introduction of the Second
Book. Presently King Edward died, and by an act of
Mary passed in October, 1553, the use of his Book be
came illegal on and after December 20th of that year.
It thus appears that the First Book was in use for two
years and about four months, and the Second Book one
year and about two months. A memorable three years
and a half for the English-speaking peoples of all time
to come, for it is not too much to say that while the
language of Tyndale and of Cranmer continues to be
heard on earth, the devotions then put into form will
keep on moulding the religious thought and firing the
spiritual imagination of this race.

The points in which the second of King Edward's
two books differs from the first are of such serious
moment and the general complexion of the later work
has in it such an access of Protestant coloring, that high
Anglican writers have been in the habit of attributing
the main features of the revision to the interference of
the Continental Reformers. " If it had not been for
the impertinent meddling," they have been accustomed
to say, " of such foreigners as Bucer, Peter Martyr, and
John a-Lasco, we might have been enjoying at the
present day the admirable and truly Catholic devotions
set forth in the fresh morning of the Reformation, before
the earth-born vapors of theological controversy and
ecclesiastical partisanship had beclouded an otherwise
fair sky." But it does not appear that there is any solid
foundation in fact for these complaints.

The natural spread of the spirit of reform among the
people of the realm, taken in connection with the changes

32 A SHORT HISTORY OP

of opinion which the swift movement of the times
necessarily engendered in the minds of the leading di
vines, are of themselves quite sufficient to account for
what took place. Certainly, if the English of that day
were at all like their descendants in our time, it is in the
highest degree unlikely that they would have allowed a
handful of learned refugees to force upon them changes
which their own sober judgment did not approve.

The truth is, very little is certainly known as to the
details of what was done in the making of Edward's
Second Book. Even the names of the members of the
committee intrusted with the revision are matter of con
jecture, and of the proceedings of that body no authen
tic record survives. What we do possess and are in a
position to criticise is the book itself, and to a brief
review of the points in which it differs from its prede
cessor we will now pass.

Upon taking up the Second Book after laying down
the First, one is struck immediately with the changed
look of Morning Prayer. This is no longer called
Matins, and no longer begins as before with the Lord's
Prayer. An Introduction has been prefixed to the
office consisting of a collection of sentences from Holy
Scripture, all of them of a penitential character, and
besides these of an Exhortation, a Confession, and an
Absolution. There can be little doubt that this oppor
tunity for making public acknowledgment of sin and
hearing the declaration of God's willingness to forgive,
was meant to counterbalance the removal from the book
of all reference, save in one instance, to private con
fession and absolution. The Church of England has
always retained in her Visitation Office a permission to

THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. 33

the priest to pronounce absolution privately to the sick
man. This was a feature of the First Book that was
not disturbed in the Second. But wherever else they
found anything that seemed to look toward the continu
ance of the system familiarly known to us under the
name of " the Confessional," they expunged it. Be
tween the Exhortation and the Confession there is, in
point of literary merit, a noticeable contrast, and it is
scarcely to be believed that both formularies can
have proceeded from one and the same pen. Another
step in the Protestant direction was the prohibition of
certain vestments that in the First Book had been
allowed, as the alb and cope. The Introit Psalms were
taken away. The word " table " was everywhere sub
stituted for the word "altar." The changes in the
Office of the Holy Communion were numerous and
significant. The Ten Commandments, for instance,
were inserted in the place where we now have them.
The Gloria in Excelsis was transferred from the begin
ning of the service to the end. The Exhortations were
re-written. The supplication for the dead was taken
out of the Prayer for the whole state of Christ's Church,
and the words " militant here on earth " were added to
the title with a view to confining the scope of the inter
cession to the circle of people still alive. The Confes
sion, Absolution, Comfortable Words, and Prayer of
Humble Access were placed before the Consecration
instead of after it. Most important of all was the
change of the words appointed to be said in delivering
the elements to the communicants. In the First Book
these had been, " The body of our Lord Jesus Christ
which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul

34 A SHORT HISTOKV OF

unto everlasting life," and in the case of the cup, " The
blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for
thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life."
For these were now substituted in the one instance the
words, " Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ
died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith,
with thanksgiving," and in the other, " Drink this in
remembrance that Christ's blood was shed for thee, and
be thankful."

From the Office for the Communion of the Sick the
direction to reserve the elements was omitted, as was
also the permission to anoint the sick man with oil.
The Service of Baptism was no longer suffered to retain
the exorcism of the evil spirit, or the white vesture, or
the unction ; and there were other items of less impor
tant change. Those mentioned reveal plainly enough
what was the animus of the revisers. Most evidently
the intention was to produce a liturgy more thoroughly
reformed, more in harmony with the new tone and
temper which the religious thought of the times was
taking on.

We come to the Third Book of Common Prayer.
Bloody Mary was dead, and Elizabeth had succeeded to
the throne.

During the Roman reaction proclamation had been
made that all the Reformed service-books should be
given up to the ecclesiastical authorities within fifteen
days to be burned. This is doubtless the reason why
copies of the liturgical books of Edward's reign are
now so exceedingly rare. Reprints of them abound, but
the originals exist only as costly curiosities.

Soon after Elizabeth's accession a committee of divines

THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. 35

assembled under her authority for the purpose of again
revising the formularies.

The queen was personally a High-Clmrch\voman, and
her own judgment is said to have been favorable to
taking the first of Edward's two books as the basis of
the revision, but a contrary preference swayed the
committee, and the lines followed were those of 1552
and not those of 1549.

The new features distinctive of the Prayer Book of
Elizabeth, otherwise known as the Prayer Book of 1559,
are not numerous. A table of Proper Lessons for
Sundays was introduced. The old vestments recognized
in the earlier part of King Edward's reign were again
legalized. The petition for deliverance from the
tyranny of the Pope was struck out of the Litany, and
by a compromise peculiarly English in its character, and,
as experience has shown, exceeding^ well judged, the
two forms of words that had been used in the de
livery of the elements in the Holy Communion were
welded together into the shape in which we have them
still.

Queen Elizabeth's Prayer Book continued in use for
five-and-forty years. Nothing was more natural than
that when she died there should come with the acces
sion of a new dynasty a demand for fresh revision.
King James, who was not afflicted with any want of
confidence in his own judgment, invited certain repre
sentatives of the disaffected party to meet, under his
presidency, the Churchmen in council with a view to
the settlement of differences. The Puritans had been
gaining in strength during Elizabeth's reign, and they
felt that they were now in position to demand a larger

86 A SHORT HISTORY OF

measure of liturgical reform than that monarch and her
advisers had been willing to concede to them.

King James convened his conference at Hampton
Court, near London, and he himself was good enough
to preside. Very little came of the debate. The Puri
tans had demanded the discontinuance of the sign of the
cross in Baptism, of bowing at the name of Jesus, of
the ring in marriage, and of the rite of confirmation.
The words " priest " and " absolution " they sought to
have expunged from the Prayer Book, and they desired
that the wearing of the surplice should be made optional.

Almost nothing was conceded to them. The words
"or Remission of Sins" were added to the title of the
Absolution, certain Prayers and Thanksgivings were in
troduced, and that portion of the Catechism which deals
with the Sacraments was for the first time set forth.
And thus the English Prayer Book started out upon its
fourth lease of life destined in this form to endure un
changed, though by no means unassailed, for more than
half a century.

A stirring half century it was. The Puritan defeat
at Hampton Court was redressed at Naseby. With the
coming in of the Long Parliament the Book of Com
mon Prayer went out, and to all appearances the tri
umph of the Commonwealth meant the final extinction
of the usage of liturgical worship on English soil. The
book, under its various forms, had lasted just a hundred
years when he who

Nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable scene

suffered at Whitehall.

THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. 37

They buried him in St. George's Chapel, Windsor,
and no single word of the Prayer Book he had loved
and for which he had fought was said over his grave.

On January3, 1645, Parliament repealed the statutes
of Edward VI. and of Elizabeth that had enjoined the
use of the Book of Common Prayer, and took order that
thereafter only such divine service should be lawful as
accorded with what was called the Directory, a manual
of suggestions with respect to public worship adopted
by the Presbyterian party as a substitute for the ancient
liturgy.

With the restoration of the Stuarts in 1660 came
naturally the restoration of the Prayer Book, and with
equal naturalness a revision of it. But of what sort
should the revision be, and under whose auspices con
ducted ? This was an anxious question for the advisers,
civil and ecclesiastical, of the restored king. Should
the second Charles take up the book just as it had fallen
from the hands of the first Charles, unchanged in line
or letter, or should he seek by judicious alterations and
timely concessions to win back for the national Church
the good- will and loyalty of those who, eighteen years
before, had broken down her hedge? The situation
may be described as triangular.

The king's secret and personal sympathies were
probably all along with the Roman Church ; his official
allegiance was plainly due to the Church of England;
and yet, at the same time, he owed much to the for
bearance of the men who had been dominant under the
Commonwealth. The mind of the nation had, indeed,
reacted toward monarchy, but not with such an abso
lute and hardy renunciation of the doctrines of popular

38 A SHORT HISTORY OF

sovereignty as to make it safe for the returning king
to do precisely as he chose. The glorious Revolution
that was destined so soon to follow upon the heels of
the gracious Restoration gave evidence, when it came,
that there were some things the people of England
prized even more highly than an hereditary throne.
Misgivings as to the amount there might still be of this
sort of electricity in the atmosphere suggested to the
king and his counsellors the expediency of holding a
conference, at which the leaders on either side might
bring forward their strong reasons in favor of this or
that method of dealing with the ecclesiastical question
in general, and more especially with the vexed problem
of worship.

Accordingly, early in the spring of 1661 the King
issued a royal warrant summoning to meet at the Savoy
Palace in the Strand an equal number of representatives
of both parties — namely, one-and-twenty Churchmen
and one-and-twenty Presbyterians.

The Episcopal deputation consisted of twelve bishops
and nine other divines called coadjutors. The Presby
terians had also their twelve principal men and their
nine coadjutors.

Conspicuous among the Episcopalians for weight of
learning were Bishops Sanderson, Cosin, and Walton,
and Doctors Pearson, Sparrow, and Heylin. Baxter,
Reynolds, Calamy, and Lightfoot were the most nota
ble of the Presbyterians.

The conference, which has ever since been known
from its place of meeting (an old palace of the Pied-
montese Ambassadors) as the Savoy Conference, con
vened on April 15, 1661. For various reasons, it was

THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYEK. 39

evident from the outset that the Churchmen were in a
position of great advantage. In the first place, signs
and tokens of a renewed confidence in monarchy and of
a revived attachment to the reigning House were be
coming daily more numerous.

Before he had had a chance to test the strength of the
existing political parties and to know how things really
stood, Charles had borne himself very discreetly toward
the Presbyterians, and had held out hopes to them
which, as the event proved, were destined never to be
realized. In a declaration put forth in the autumn of
1660, after he had been for some months on English
soil, he had even gone so far as to say: " When we were
in Holland we were attended by many grave and learned
ministers from hence, who were looked upon as the most
able and principal asserters of the Presbyterian opinions;
with whom we had as much conference as the multitude
of affairs which were then upon us would permit us to
have, and to our great satisfaction and comfort found
them persons full of affection to us, of zeal for the peace
of the Church and State, and neither enemies, as they
have been given out to be, to episcopacy or liturgy, but
modestly to desire such alterations in either, as without
shaking foundations might best allay the present dis
tempers."

By the time the conference met it had become evident,
from votes taken in Parliament and otherwise, that the
Churchmen could sustain toward their opponents a some
what stiffer attitude than this without imperilling their
cause. Another great advantage enjoyed by the Epis
copalians grew out of the fact that they were the party
in possession. They had only to profess themselves sat-

40 A SHORT HISTORY OF

isfied with the Prayer Book as it stood, in order to throw
the Presbyterians into the position of assailants, and de
fense is always easier than attack. Sheldon, the Bishop
of London, was not slow to perceive this. At the very
first meeting of the conference, he is reported to have
said that "as the Xon-conformists, and not the bishops,
had sought for the conference, nothing could be done
till the former had delivered their exceptions in writing,
together with the additional forms and alterations which
they desired." Upon which Bishop Burnet in his
History of his own Times remarks : " Sheldon saw well
what the effect would be of putting them to make all their
demands at once. The number of them raised a mighty
outcry against them, as people that could never be
satisfied."

The Presbyterians, however, took up the challenge,
set to work at formulating their objections, and ap
pointed Richard Baxter, the most famous of their num
ber, to show what could be done in the way of making
a better manual of worship than the Book of Common
Prayer.

Baxter, a truly great man and wise in a way, though
scarcely in the liturgical way, was guilty of the incred
ible folly of undertaking to construct a Prayer Book
within a fortnight.

Of this liturgy it is probably safe to say that no de
nomination of Christians, however anti-prelatical or
eccentric, would for a moment dream of adopting it, if,
indeed, there be a single local congregation anywhere
that could be persuaded to employ it. The characteristic
of the devotions is lengthiness. The opening sentence
of the prayer with which the book begins contains by

THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. 41

actual count eighty-three words. It is probable that
Baxter by his rash act did more to injure the cause of
intelligent and reverential liturgical revision than any
ten men have done before or since. In every discussion
of the subject he is almost sure to be brought forward
as "the awful example."

A document much more to the point than Baxter's
Liturgy was the formal catalogue of faults and blemishes
alleged against the Prayer Book, which the Puritan
members of the confei'ence in due time brought in.
This indictment, for it may fairly be called such, since
it was drawn up in separate counts, is very interesting
reading. Of the " exceptions against the Book of
Common Prayer," as the Puritans named their list of
liturgical grievances, some must strike almost any
reader of the present day as trivial and unworthy.
Others again there are that draw a sympathetic Amen
from many quarters to-day. To an American Episco
palian the catalogue is chiefly interesting as showing
how ready and even eager were our colonial ancestors
of a hundred years ago to remove out of the way such
known rocks of offence as they could. An attentive
student of the American Prayer Book cannot fail to be
struck with the number of instances in which the text
gives evidence of the influence exerted over the minds
of our revisers by what had been urged, more than a
hundred years before, by the Puritan members of the
Savoy Conference. The defeat of 1661 was, in a
measure at least, avenged in 1789. It is encouraging
to those who cast their bread upon liturgical waters to
notice after how many days the return may come. But
the conference, to all outward seeming, was a failure.

42 A SHORT HISTORY OF

Baxter's unhappy Prayer Book was its own sufficient ref
utation, and as for the list of special grievances it was
met by the bishops with an " Answer " that was full of
hard raps and conceded almost nothing.

A few detached paragraphs may serve to illustrate
the general tone of this reply. Here, for instance, is
the comment of the bishops upon the request of the
Puritans to be allowed occasionally to substitute extem
poraneous for liturgical devotions. " The gift or rather
spirit of prayer consists in the inward graces of the
spirit, not in extempore expressions which any man of
natural parts having a voluble tongue and audacity may
attain to without any special gift." Nothing very con
ciliatory in that. To the complaint that the Collects
are too short, the bishops reply that they cannot for
that reason be accounted faulty, being like those " short
but prevalent prayers in Scripture, Lord, be merciful to
me a sinner. Lord, increase our faith." The Puritans
had objected to the antiphonal element in the Prayer-
Book services, and desired to have nothing of a respon
sive character allowed beyond the single word Amen.
" But," rejoin the bishops, " they directly practise the
contrary in one of their principal parts of worship, sing
ing of psalms, where the people bear as great a part as
the minister. If this way be done in Hopkin's why not
in David's Psalms ; if in metre, why not in prose ; if in
a psalm, why not in a litany ? " Sharp, but not winning.

The Puritans had objected to the people's kneeling
while the Commandments were read on the score that
ignorant worshippers might mistake the Decalogue for
a form of prayer. With some asperity the bishops reply
that " why Christian people should not upon their knees

THE BOOK OF COMMON PEATEB. 43

ask their pardon for their life forfeited for the breach
of every commandment and pray for grace to keep
them for the time to come they must be more than
'ignorant' that can scruple."

The time during which the conference at the Savoy
should continue its sessions had been limited to four
months. This period expired on July 24, 1661, and
the apparently fruitless disputation was at an end.
Meanwhile, however, Convocation, the recognized legis
lature of the Church of England, had begun to sit, and
the bishops had undertaken a revision of the Prayer
Book after their own mind, and with slight regard to
what they had been hearing from their critics at the
Savoy. The bulk of their work, which included, it is
said, more than six hundred alterations, most of them
of a verbal character and of no great importance, was
accomplished within the compass of a single month. It
is consoling to those who within our own memory have
been charged with indecent haste for seeking to effect a
revision of the American Book of Common Prayer within
a period of nine years, to find this precedent in ecclesias
tical history for their so great rashness.

Since Charles the Second's day there has been no
formal revision of the Prayer Book of the Church of
England by the Church of England.

Some slight relaxations of liturgical use on Sundays
have been made legal by Act of Parliament, but in all
important respects the Prayer Book of Victoria is iden
tical with the book set forth by Convocation and sanc
tioned by Parliament shortly after the collapse of the
Savoy Conference. Under no previous lease of life did
the book enjoy anything like so long a period of con-

44 A SHORT HISTORY OF

tinned existence. Elizabeth's book was the longest lived
of all that preceded the Restoration, but that only con
tinued in use five-and-forty years. But the Prayer Book
of 1661 has now held its own in England for two cen
turies and a quarter. When, therefore, we are asked to
accept the first Edwardian Book as the only just ex
ponent of the religious mind of England, it is open to
us to reply, " Why should we, seeing that the Caroline
Book has served as the vehicle of English devotion for
a period seventy-five times as long ? " The most vo
luminous of the additions made to the Prayer Book, in
1661, were the Office for the Baptism of Adults and the
Forms of Prayer to be used at Sea. The wide diffusion,
under the Commonwealth, of what were then called
Anabaptist opinions, had brought it to pass that through
out the kingdom there were thousands of men and
women who had grown up unbaptized. At the time of
the Reformation such a thing as an unchristened Chris
tendom seems not to have been thought possible. At
any rate no provision was made for the contingenc}^.
But upon the spread of liberty of religious thought
there followed, logically enough, the spread of liberty
of religious action, and it was not strange that after a
whole generation had spent its life in controversy of
the warmest sort over this very point of Baptism, there
were found to be in England multitudes of the unbap
tized.

Another reason assigned in the Preface of the Eng
lish Prayer Book for the addition of this office was that
it might be used for the baptizing of " natives in the
plantations and other converts." This is the first hint
of any awakening of the conscience of the English

THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. 45

Church to a sense of duty toward those strangers and
foreigners who in the " Greater Britain " of these later
days fill so large a place. The composition of the office,
which differs very little, perhaps scarcely enough, from
that appointed for the Baptism of Infants, is attributed
to Griffith, the Bishop of St. Asaph. The compiler of
the Forms of Prayer to be used at Sea was Bishop
Sanderson, famous among English theologians as an
authority on casuistry. He must have found it rather
a nice case of conscience to decide whether a Stuart
divine in preparing forms of prayer for a navy that had
been the creation of Oliver Cromwell ought wholly to
omit an acknowledgment of the nation's obligation to
that stout-hearted, if non-Episcopal Christian. Other
additions of importance made at this revision were the
General Thanksgiving, in all probability the work of
Reynolds, a conforming Presbyterian divine, the Collect,
Epistle, and Gospel for the Sixth Sunday after the
Epiphany, the Prayer for Parliament, upon the lines of
which our own Prayer for Congress was afterward
modelled, and the Prayer for All Sorts and Conditions
of Men. In the Litany the words " rebellion " and
"schism" were introduced into one of the suffrages,
becoming tide-marks of the havoc wrought in Church
and State by what the revisers, doubtless, looked back up
on as " the flood of the ungodly." The words " Bishops,
Priests, and Deacons" were substituted for " Bishops,
Pastors, and Ministers of the Church." New Collects
were appointed for the Third Sunday in Advent and
for St. Stephen's Day. Both of these are distinct gains,
albeit had the opinion then prevailed that to introduce
into the Prayer Book anything from the pen of a living

46 A SHORT HISTORY OF

writer is an impiety, we should have gained neither of
them.

Another important change made in 1662 w.as the
adoption for the Sentences, Epistles and Gospels of the
language of King James's Bible in place of that of
earlier versions. This principle was not applied to the
Psalter, to the Decalogue, or, in fact, to any of the por
tions of Scripture contained in the Communion Service.

It is also interesting to note that the Confession in
the Holy Communion, which the earlier rubric had
directed should be said by one of the congregation, 'or
else by one of the ministers, or by the priest himself,
" was now made general and enjoined upon all the wor
shippers."

Most suggestive of all, however, was the reinsertion
at the end of the Communion Service of a certain
Declaration about the significance of the act of kneeling
at the reception of the elements, which had, as some
say, irregularly and without proper authority, found its
way into the Second Book of Edward VI., but had been
omitted from all subsequent books till now. This
Declaration, which from its not being printed in red
ink is known to those who dislike it under the name of
" the black rubric," was undoubtedly intended to ease
the consciences of those who scrupled to kneel at the
altar-rail for fear of seeming to countenance that super
stitious adoration of the elements known to and stigma
tized by the Reformers as " host-worship." The lan
guage of the black rubric as it stood in Edward's
Second Book was as follows : " Although no order can
be so perfectly devised but it may be of some, either for
their ignorance and infirmity, or else of malice and ob-

THE BOOK OF COMMON PEAYEE. 47

stinacy, misconstrued, depraved, and interpreted in a
wrong part ; and yet because brotherly charity willeth
that so much as conveniently may be offences should be
taken away ; therefore we willing to do the same :
whereas, it is ordained in the Book of Common Prayer,
in the Administration of the Lord's Supper, that the
communicants kneeling should receive the Holy Com
munion, which thing being well meant for a significa
tion of the humble and grateful acknowledging of the
benefits of Christ given unto the worthy receiver, and
to avoid the profanation and disorder, which about the
Holy Communion might else ensue, lest yet the same
kneeling might be thought or taken otherwise ; we do
declare that it is not meant thereby, that any adoration
is done or ought to be done, either unto the sacramental
bread or wine there bodily received or unto any real
and essential presence there being of Christ's natural
flesh and blood. For as concerning the sacramental
bread and wine they remain still in their very natural
substances, and therefore may not be adored, for that
were idolatry to be abhorred of all faithful Christians :
and as concerning the natural body and blood of our
Saviour Christ, they are in heaven and not here, for it
is against the truth of Christ's true natural body to be
in more places than in one at one time."

In restoring this significant Declaration, the revisers
of 1662 substituted the words " corporal presence "for
the words " real and substantial presence," but probably
with no intention other than that of making the original
meaning more plain. The fact that in the teeth and
eyes of the black rubric the practice known as Eucha-
ristical adoration has become widely prevalent in the

48 A SHORT HISTORY OF

Church of England, only shows how little dependence
can be placed on forms of words to keep even excellent
and religious people from doing the things they have a
mind to do.

In taking leave of the Caroline revision, it may be
permitted to dwell for a moment upon the serious char
acter of the conclusion reached by the ecclesiastical
leaders of that day. An opportunity was given them to
conciliate dissent. Without going all lengths, without
in any measure imperilling the great foundation prin
ciples of Anglican religion, they might, it would seem,
have won back to the national church thousands of those
whom their sternness not only repelled but permanently
embittered. But it was the hour of victory with the
Churchmen, and " Woe to the conquered " seems to
have been their cry. They set their faces as a flint
against concession ; they passed their iron-clad act of
uniformity, and now for more than two hundred years
religion in Great Britain has been a household divided
against itself. Perhaps nothing that the men of the
Restoration could have done would have made it other
wise. Perhaps the familiar question of the cynical Dean
of St. Patrick's, " What imports it how large a gate you
open, if there be always left a number who place a pride
and a merit in refusing to enter ? " was a fair question,
and fatal to any dream of unity. And yet one may be
pardoned for believing that had a little of the oil of
brotherly kindness been poured upon those troubled
waters we whom the waves still buffet might to-day be
sailing a smoother sea.

As stated above, the Convocation of 1662 gave to the
Prayer Book of the Church of England the form it has

THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. 49

ever since retained. But it must not be supposed that
no efforts have been made meanwhile to bring changes
to pass. The books written upon the subject form a
literature by themselves.

The one really serious attempt to reconstruct the

Liturgy in post-Caroline times was that which grew

j naturally enough out of the Revolution of 1688. In

every previous crisis of political change, the Prayer

Book had felt the tremor along with the statute-book.

Church and State, like heart and brain, are sympa
thetically responsive to one another ; revisions of rubrics
go naturally along with revisions of codes. It was only
what might have been anticipated, therefore, that when
William and Mary came to the throne a Commission
should issue for a new review. If Elizabeth had found
it necessary to revise the book, if James had found it
necessary, if Charles had found it necessary, why should
not the strong hand of William of Orange be laid upon
the pages ? But this time the rule was destined to find
its exception. The work of review was, indeed, under
taken by a Royal Commission, including among its
members the great names of Stillingfleet, Tillotson, and
Beveridge, but nothing came of their work. Convoca
tion again showed itself unfriendly to anything like con
cessive measures, and so complete was the obscurity into
which the doings of the Commission fell, that even as
late as 1849, Card well, in the third edition of his His
tory of Conferences, speaks as if he knew nothing of the
whereabouts of the record. In 1854 the manuscript
minutes of the Commission's proceedings were discov
ered in the Library of Lambeth Palace, and by order of
Parliament printed as a Blue-book. The same docu-

50 A SHORT HISTORY OF

ment lias also been published in a more readable form
by Bagster. One rises from the perusal of this Broad
Church Prayer Book — for such, perhaps, Tillotson's at
tempt may not unfairly be called — profoundly thankful
that the promoters of it were not suffered to succeed.
The Preface to our American Book of Common Prayer
refers to this attempted review of 1689 "as a great and
good work." But the greatness and the goodness must
have lain in the motive, for one fails to discern them
either in the matter or in the manner of what was
recommended.

Even Macaulay, Whig that he is, fails not to put on
record his condemnation of the literary violence which
the Prayer Book so narrowly escaped at the hands of
the Royal Commission of 1689. Terseness was not the
special excellency of Macaulay's own style, yet even he
resented Bishop Patrick's notion that the Collects could
be improved by amplification. One of the few really
good suggestions made by the Commissioners was that
of using the Beatitudes in the Office of the Holy Com
munion as an alternate for the Decalogue. There are
certain festivals of the Christian year when such a sub
stitution would be most timely and refreshing.

We make a leap now of just a hundred years. From
1689 we pass to 1789, and find ourselves in the city of
Philadelphia, at a convention assembled for the purpose
of framing a constitution and setting forth a liturgy
for a body of Christians destined to be known as the
Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of
America. During the interval between the issue of the
Declaration of Independence and the Ratification of the
Constitution of the United States, the people in this

THE BOOK OP COMMON PRAYER. 51

country who had been brought up in the communion of
the Church of England found themselves ecclesiastically
in a very delicate position indeed. As colonists they
had been canonically under -the spiritual jurisdiction
of the Bishop of London, a somewhat remote dio
cesan. But with this Episcopal bond broken and
no new one formed, they seemed to be in a peculiar
sense adrift. It does not fall to me to narrate the
steps that led to the final establishment of the episco
pacy upon a sure foundation, nor yet to trace the
process through which the Church's legislative system
came gradually to its completion. Our interest is a
liturgical one, and our subject matter the evolution of
the Prayer Book. I say nothing, therefore, of other
matters that were debated in the Convention of 1789,
but shall propose instead that we confine ourselves to
what was said and done about the Prayer Book. In
order, however, fully to appreciate the situation we
must go back a little. In a half-formal and half-
informal fashion there had come into existence, four
years before this Convention of 1789 assembled, an
American Liturgy now known by the name of The
Proposed Book. It had been compiled on the basis
of the English Prayer Book by a Committee of three
eminent clergymen, Dr. White of Pennsylvania, Dr.
William Smith of Maryland, and Dr. Wharton of Dela
ware. Precisely what measure of acceptance this book
enjoyed, or to what extent it came actually into use, are
difficult, perhaps hopeless questions.

What we know for certain is that the public opinion
of the greater number of Churchmen rejected it as in
adequate and unsatisfactory. In the Convention of

52

1789 The Proposed Book does not seem to have been
seriously considered in open debate at all, though
doubtless there was much talk about it, much contro
versy over its merits and demerits at Philadelphia
dinner-tables and elsewhere while the session was in
progress.

The truth is, the changes set forth in The Proposed
Book were too sweeping to commend themselves to
the sober second-thought of men whose blood still
showed the tincture of English conservatism. Possibly
also some old flames of Tory resentment were rekindled,
here and there, by the prominence given in the book to
a form of public thanksgiving for the Fourth of July.
There were Churchmen doubtless at that day who
failed duly to appreciate what were called in the title of
the office, " the inestimable blessings of Religious and
Civil Liberty." Others again may have been offended
by the treatment measured out to the Psalter, which
was portioned into thirty selections of two parts each,
with the Benedicite added at the end, to be used,
if desired, on the thirty-first day of any month.
Another somewhat crude and unliturgical device was
the running together without break of the Morning
Prayer and the Litany.

I speak of blemishes, but The Proposed Booh had its
excellences also. Just at present it is the fashion in
Anglican circles to heap ridicule and contempt on The
Proposed Book out of all proportion to its real demerits.
Somehow it is thought to compromise us with the
English by showing up our ecclesiastical ancestors in an
unfavorable light as unlearned and ignorant men. It is
treated as people will sometimes treat an old family

THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYEE. 53

portrait of a forebear, who in his day was under a
cloud, mismanaged trust funds, or made money in the
slave trade. Thus a grave historiographer by way of
speaking comfortably on this score, assures us that the
volume " speedily sunk into obscurity," becoming one
of the rarest of the books illustrative of our ecclesiasti
cal annals.

And yet, curiously enough, The Proposed Book was
in some points more " churchly," using the word in a
sense expressive of liturgical accuracy, than the book
finally adopted. In the Morning Prayer it has the
Venite in full and not abridged. The Benedictus it
also gives entire. A single form of Absolution is sup
plied. The versicles following upon the Creed are more
numerous than ours. In the Evening Prayer the great
Gospel Hymns, the Magnificat and the Niinc dimittis,
stand in the places to which we with tardy justice have
only just restored them.

Again, if we consider those features of The Proposed
Book that w*ere retained and made part of the Liturgy
in 1789, we shall have further reason to refrain from
wholesale condemnation of this tentative work. For
example, we owe the two opening sentences of Morning
Prayer, " The Lord is in his holy temple " and " From
the rising of the sun," to Tfie Proposed Book, and also
the special form for Thanksgiving Day. And yet, on
the whole, the Convention of 1789 acted most wisely in
determining that it would make the Prayer Book of the
Church of England, rather than The Proposed Book, the
real basis of revision. It did so, and as a result we have
what has served us so well during the first century of
our national life — the Book of Common Prayer and

54 A SHORT HISTORY OP

Administration of the Sacraments and other rites and
ceremonies of the Church according to the use of the
Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of
America. The points wherein the American Prayer
Book differs from the Prayer Book of the Church of
England are too numerous to be catalogued in full.
" They will appear," says the Preface (a composition
borrowed, by the way, almost wholly from The Proposed
Book], " and, it is to be hoped, the reasons of them also,
upon a comparison of this with the Book of Common
Prayer of the Church of England.

The most important differences are the following :
The permissive use of " Selections of Psalms in place of
the Psalms appointed for the day of the month." This
was doubtless suggested by the wholesale transforma
tion of the Psalter in The Proposed Book into a series of
selections.

The permitted shortening of the Litany is an American
feature.

A number of the special prayers, as, for Example, the
prayer for a sick person, that for persons going to sea,
the thanksgivings for a recovery and for a safe return,
all these are peculiar to the American use. Extensive
alterations were made in the Marriage Service and cer- 1
tain greatly needed ones in the Burial Office. The two
most noteworthy differences, however, are the omission
from our Prayer Book of the so-called Athanasian Creed,
and the insertion in it of that part of the Consecration
Prayer in the Communion Office known as the Invoca
tion. The engrafting of this latter feature we owe to
the influence of Bishop Seab*ury, who by this addition
not only assimilated the language of our liturgy more

THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYEK. 55

closely to that of the ancient formularies of the Oriental
Church, but also insured our being kept reminded of the
truly spiritual character of Holy Communion. "It is
the spirit that quickeneth," this Invocation seems to say;
" the flesh profiteth nothing." Quite in line with this
was the alteration made at the same time in the language
of the Catechism. " The Body and Blood of Christ,"
says the English Book, " which are verily and indeed
taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper."

"The Body and Blood of Christ," says the American
Book, " which are spiritually taken and received by the
faithful in the Lord's Supper."

Many verbal changes are to be found scattered here
and there through the book, some of them for the
better, some, perhaps, for the worse. The prevailing
purpose seems to have been to expunge all obsolete
words and phrases while dealing tenderly with obsoles
cent ones. In this course, however, the revisers were
by no means always and everywhere consistent.

" Prevent," in the sense of " anticipate," is altered in
some places but left unchanged in others. In the Visi
tation of Prisoners, an office borrowed from the Irish
Prayer Book, the thoroughly obsolete expression, "As
you tender," in the sense of " as you value," the salva
tion of your soul, is retained.

From the Psalter has disappeared in the American
Book " Thou tellest my Sittings," although why this
particular archaism should have been selected for ban
ishment and a hundred others spared, it is not easy to
understand.

Perhaps some sudden impatience seized the reviser,
like that which moved Bishop Wren, while annotating

56 A SHORT HISTORY OF

his Prayer Book, to write on the margin of the calendar
for August, " Out with ' dog days ' from among the
saints."

Considering what a bond of unity the Lord's Prayer
appears to be becoming among all English-speaking
worshippers, it is, perhaps, to be regretted that our
revisers changed the wording of it in two or three
places. The excision of "Lighten our darkness" must
probably be attributed to the prosaic matter-of-fact
temper which had possession of everybody and every
thing daring the last quarter of the eighteenth century.

The Ordinal, the Articles, the Consecration of
Churches, and the Institution of Ministers made no
part of the Prayer Book as it was set forth in 1789 ; nor
do they, even now, strictly speaking, make a part of it,
although in the matter of binding force and legal
authority they are on the same footing.

The Ordinal and Articles are substantially identical
with the English Ordinal and Articles, save in the
matter of a reference to the Athanasian Creed and
several references to the connection of Church arid State.
The Consecration of Churches and the Institution of
Ministers are offices distinctively American. If I add
that the American Book drops out of the Visitation of
the Sick a form of private absolution, and greatly
modifies the service for Ash-Wednesday, we shall have
made our survey of differences tolerably, though by no
means exhaustively complete.

And now what is the lesson taught us by the history
of the Prayer Book? Homiletical as the question
sounds, it is worth asking.

We have reviewed rapidly, but not carelessly, the

THE BOOK OF COMMON PEAYER. 57

vicissitudes of the book's wonderful career, and we ought
to be in a position to draw some sort of instructive
inference from it all. Well, one thing taught us is this,
the singular power of survival that lives in gracious
words. They wondered at the " gracious words which
proceeded out of His mouth," and because they wondered
at them they treasured them up.

Kind words, says the child's hymn, can never die ;
neither can kindly words, and kindly in the deepest sense
are many, many of the words of the Common Prayer ;
they touch that which is most catholic in us, that which
strongly links us to our kind. There is that in some of
the Collects which as it has lasted since the days when
Roman emperors were sitting on their thrones, so will
it last wThile man continues what he is, a praying
creature.

Another thing taught us by the Prayer Book's history
is the duty of being forever on our guard in the religious
life against "the falsehood of extremes."

The emancipated thinkers who account all standards
of belief to be no better than dungeon walls, scoff at
this feature of the Anglican character with much bitter
ness. " Your Church is a Church of compromises," they
say, "and your boasted Via media only a coward's path,
the poor refuge of the man who dares not walk in the
open." But when we see this Prayer Book condemned
for being what it is by Bloody Mary, and then again
condemned for being what it is by the Long Parliament,
the thought occurs to us that possibly there is enshrined
in this much-persecuted volume a truth larger than the
Romanist is willing to tolerate, or the Puritan generous
enough to apprehend.

58 THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYEK.

A third important lesson is that we are not to con
found revision with ruin, or to suppose that because a
book is marvellously good it cannot conceivably be
bettered. Each accomplished revision of the Book of
Common Prayer has been a distinct step in advance.
If God in his wise providence suffered an excellent
growth of devotion to spring up out of the soil of
England in the days of Edward the Sixth, and, after
many years, determined that like a vine out of Egypt it
should be brought across the sea and given root on these
shores, we need not fear that we are about to lose utterly
our pleasant plant if we notice that the twigs and
leaves are adapting themselves to the climate and the
atmosphere of the new dwelling-place. The life within
the vine remains what it always was. The growth
means health. The power of adaptation is the guarantee
of a perpetual youth.

REVISION OF THE AMERICAN COMMON
PRAYER.

REVISION OF THE AMERICAN COMMON
PRAYER.*

THE revision of long established formularies of public
worship is, as it ought to be, a matter compassed about
with obstacles many and great. A wise doubtfulness
prompts conservative minds to throw every mover for
change upon the defensive, when liturgical interests are
at stake. So many men are born into the world with a
native disposition to tamper with and tinker all settled
things, and so many more become persuaded, as time
goes on, of a personal " mission " to pull down and re
make whatever has been once built up, esteeming life a
failure unless they have contrived to build each his own
monument upon a clearing, that lovers of the old ways
are sometimes compelled in sheer self-defence to put on
the appearance of being more obstinately set against
change than they really are. It ought not to be abso
lutely impossible to alter a national hand-book of worship
(which is what any manual calling itself a Common
Prayer must aspire to become), but it is well that it
should be all but impossible to do so. Logically it
might seem as if the possession of a power to make
involved a continuance of power to remake ; and so it
does, to a certain extent, but only to a certain extent.
Living organisms cannot be remodelled with the same
freedom as dead matter. A solemnity hangs about the

* First printed in the American Church Review, April, 1881.

61

62 REVISION OF THE

moment of birth that attaches to no other crisis in a
man's life until death comes. Similarly there are cer
tain features which the founders of institutions, the first
makers of organic law, imprint lastingly upon their
work. We may destroy the living thing so brought to
birth ; to kill is always possible ; but only by very
gradual and plastic methods can we hope in any meas
ure to reconstruct the actual embodiment of life once
achieved. The men of 1789 had us in their power,
even as the men of 1549 had had both them and us. In
every creative epoch many things are settled by which
unborn generations will be bound.*

It may be urged that this is an argument against
adopting liturgies in. the first instance as vehicles of
worship ; and such undoubtedly it is in so far forth as
immobility ought in such matters to be reckoned a dis
advantage. But we are bound to take into account the
gain which comes with immobility as well as the draw
backs. We must consider how large a proportion of
the reverence which the great institutes of human life
exact from us is due to the fixity of the things them
selves. Mont Blanc loses nothing of its hold upon our
admiration because we always find it in the same place.

*]Vtuch confusion of thought and speech in connection with
our ecclesiastical legislation grows out of not keeping in mind the
fact that here in America the organic genetic law of the Church,
as well as of the State, is in writing, and compacted into definite
propositions. We draw, that is to say, a far sharper distinction
than it is possible to do in England between what is constitutional
and what is simply statutory. There is no function of our
General Convention that answers to the "omnipotence of Parlia
ment." This creative faculty was vacated once for all at the
adoption of the Constitution.

AMERICAN COMMON PRAYER. 63

Men like to feel that there is something in the world
stronger than the individual will, stronger simply be
cause it expresses the settled common-sense of many as
to what is fitting and right in contrast with the whim
of one. Lawyers, as a class, are almost as conservative
as ecclesiastics, and for the very reason that they also
are charged with the custody of established forms which
it is. important that men should reverence. Laws affect
ing the tenure of property, the binding force of con
tracts, the stability of the marriage relation, not only
cannot be lightly altered, the very phraseology in which
they are couched must be carefully handled, for fear lest
with the passing away of the form something of the
substance go also.

Moreover, the affections of men fasten themselves very
tenaciously to such a trellis as a liturgy affords. The
love for "the old words and the old tunes" against
which all innovators in hymnody, however deserving,
have to do battle, asserts itself under the form of love
for the old prayers with ten-fold vehemence. An im
mense fund of latent heat smoulders beneath the maxim,
"Let the ancient customs prevail"; and few of the vic
tories achieved by the papacy are so startling as those
that have resulted in the displacement of the liturgical
uses of local Churches, that of Paris, for example, by the
Roman rite.

But true principles, as we are often reminded, become
falsehoods when shoved across the line of proper meas
ure. The very cycles of the astronomers have an end,
and the clock-work of the most ancient heavens, or at
least our reading of it, calls, from time to time, for read
justment. So long as man continues fallible his best

64 REVISION OF THE

intended workmanship will occasionally demand such
alteration for the better as, within the limits already
pointed out, may be possible.

Many signs of the times suggest that the hour for a
fresh review of the Anglican formularies of worship is
nigh at hand. Some of these tokens are written on a
sky broad enough to cover the whole English-speaking
race, others of them are visible chiefly within our own
national horizon. With respect to the English book,
Cardwell* writing in 1840 and Freeman f in 1855, con
sidered revision, however desirable in the abstract, to
be a thing utterly out of reach, not within the circle,
as the parliamentary phrase now runs, of "practical
politics."

But it may be fairly questioned whether these high
authorities, were they living to-day, would not concur
in the judgment of a more recent writer when he says —
in language which, mutatis mutandis, applies to our
own case : " The most weighty plea in favor of timely
inquiry into the subject is that the process of revision
is actually going on piecemeal, and with no very intel
ligent survey of the bearings as a preliminary to any
one instalment. The New Lectionary of 1871, the
Shortened Services Act, the debates in the Convocation
of Canterbury on rubrical amendments, none of them
marked by any sufficient care or knowledge, and all
fraught with at least the possibility of serious conse
quence, are examples of formal and recognized inroads
on the Act of Uniformity ; while such practical though
unauthorized additions to the scanty group of Anglican

* Conferences, p. 461.

f Principks of Divine Service, vol. i. p. 390.

AMERICAN COMMON PEAYER. 65

formularies as the Three Hours' Devotion, Harvest
Thanksgivings, Public Institution of Incumbents, Ordi
nation of Readers and Deaconesses, and Children's Ser
vices prove incontestably that the narrow limits of the
Common Prayer Book are no longer adequate for the
spiritual needs of the Church of England. . .

" It is evident, then, that contented acquiescence with
the old state of things already belongs to the past, and
that a return to it is impossible. We must perforce
advance, for good or ill, in the path of revision, and
cannot even materially slacken the pace nor defer the
crisis. One choice, however, is left in our power, and
that is the most important of all, namely, the direction
which revision shall take — that of conservative and
recuperative addition, or that of further eviscei'ation,
ceremonial or devotional."*

A measure looking in the direction towards which this
reviewer points was actually passed by the General Con
vention of our own Church at its late session in October,
1880.

The wording of the Resolution referred to was as
follows :

"Resolved: That a Joint Committee, to consist of
seven bishops, seven presbyters, and seven laymen be
appointed to consider and report to the next General
Convention whether, in view of the fact that this
Church is soon to enter upon the second century of its
organized existence in this country, the changed condi
tions of the national life do not demand certain altera
tions in the Book of Common Pra3rer in the direction

* Church Quarterly Renew, London, October, 1876.

66 REVISION OF THE

of liturgical enrichment and increased flexibility of
use." *

In the present article the writer proposes to inquire,
in connection with this measure :

(1) What motives may fairly be supposed to have
actuated the Convention in allowing so important an
initiatory step to be taken ?

(2) What measure of authority was conferred on
and what scope given to the Joint Committee then con
stituted ?

(3) What reasons exist for considering the present a
happy moment to attempt liturgical revision, within
certain limits, should such a thing be determined upon ?

(4) What serious difficulties and obstacles are likely
to be encountered in Committee, in Convention, and in
the Church at large ?

(5) What particular improvements and adjustments
of our existing system would be, in point of fact, best
worth the effort necessary to secure them ?

I. The interpretation of motives, difficult enough in
the case of individuals, becomes mere guess-work when
the action under analysis is that of a large body of
men. Which one of many considerations urged upon
the Convention carried with it the supreme weight of
persuasion in this particular instance it is impossible to
say. Two or three arguments, however, from their
frequent reappearance in the debate may fairly be

* The votes of the House of Bishops are not reported numeri
cally. In the House of Clerical and Lay Deputies the vote stood
as follows : "Of the Clergy there were 43 Dioceses represented —
Ayes, 33 ; nays, 9 ; divided, 1. Of the Laity there were 35 Dio
ceses represented — Ayes, 20 ; nays, 11 ; divided, 4." — Journal of
Convention of 1880, p. 152.

AMERICAN COMMON PRAYER. 67

judged to have exercised a controlling influence. One
of these was hinted at in the language of the resolution
itself, namely, the call for revision that has grown
out of " the changed conditions of the national life."
Shrewd and far-seeing as were William White and his
coadjutors in their forecast of nineteenth century needs
made from the standpoint of the Peace of Versailles,
they would have been more than human had they suc
ceeded in anticipating all the civil and ecclesiastical con
sequences destined to flow from that memorable event.
Certainly it ought not to be held strange that this
" new America " of ours, with its enormously multiplied
territory, its conglomerate of races, its novel forms of
association, its multiplicity of industries not dreamed of
a generation ago, should have demands to make in respect
to a better adaptation of ancient formularies to present
wants, such as thoughtful people count both reasonable
and cogent. That a Prayer Book revised primarily for
the use of a half -proscribed Church planted here and
there along a sparsely inhabited sea-coast, should serve
as amply as it does the purposes of a population now
swollen from four millions to fifty, and covering the
whole breadth of the continent, is marvel enough ; to
assert for the book entire adequacy to meet these altered
circumstances is a mistake. "New time, new favors,
and new joys," so a familiar hymn affirms, " do a new
song require." We have conceded the principle so far
as psalmody is concerned, why not apply it to the service
of prayer as well as to that of praise, and in addition to
our new hymns secure also such new intercessions and
new thanksgivings as the needs of to-day suggest ?
The reference in the resolution to the approaching

68 REVISION OF THE

completion of the century has since been playfully
characterized as a bit of " sentinientalism." * The criti
cism would be entirely just if the mere recurrence of the
centennial anniversary were the point chiefly emphasized.
But when a century closes as this one of ours has done
with a great social revolution whereby " all estates of
men " have been more or less affected, the proposal to
signalize entrance upon a fresh stretch of national life
by making devotional preparation for it is something
better than a pretty conceit ; there is a serious reason
ableness in it.f

Every revision of the Common Prayer of the Church
of England, and there have been four of them since
Edward's First Book was put in print, has taken place
at some important era of transition in the national life :
and conversely it may be said that every civil crisis,
with a single exception, has left its mark upon the
formularies.

To one who argues that because we in this country are
evidently entering upon a new phase of the national life
we ought similarly to re-enforce and readjust our

* Church Eclectic for November, 1880.

f Remembering the deluge of "centennial" rhetoric let loose
upon the country five years ago. another critic may well feel justi
fied in finding in the language of the resolution what he considers
" an unnecessary raison d'etre." But it is just possible that cen
tennial changes rest on a basis of genuine cause and effect quite
independent of the decimal system. A century covers the range
of three generations, and the generation is a natural, not an arbi
trary division of time. What the grandfather practises the son
criticises and the grandson amends. This at least ought to com
mend itself to the consideration of the lovers of mystical numbers
and "periodic laws."

AMERICAN COMMON PRAYER. 69

service-book, it is no sufficient reply to urge the severance
effected here between Church and State. The fact that
ours is a non-established Church does not make her
wholly unresponsive to the shocks of change that touch
the civil fabric. In so far as a political renewal alters
the social grading of society, bringing in education, for
instance, where before it was not, or suddenly develop
ing new forms of industrial activity, the Church,
whether established or not, is in duty bound to take cog
nizance of the fresh field of duty thus suddenly thrust
upon her, and to prepare herself accordingly.

In the Preface added to the English Prayer Book at
the Restoration, and commonly attributed to Sanderson,
" that staid and well weighed man," as Hammond called
him, there occurs a sentence which, both on account of
its embodying in a few words the whole philosophy of
liturgical revision and because of a certain practical
bearing presently to be pointed out, it is worth while, in
spite of its familiarity, to quote :

" The particular forms of Divine worship, and the
rites and ceremonies appointed to be used therein, be
ing things in their own nature indifferent and alterable
and so acknowledged, it is but reasonable, that upon
weighty and important considerations, according to the
various exigency of times and occasions, such changes
and alterations should be made therein, as to those that
are in place of authority should from time to time seem
either necessary or expedient."

Contemporaneously with this utterance there came
into the Prayer Book, as a direct consequence of the
enormous enlargement of the naval and commercial
marine that had taken place under the Commonwealth,

YO REVISION OF THE

the " Forms of Prayer to be used at Sea." Here was a
wise and right-minded recognition of a new want that
had sprung up with a new time, a want which jealousy
of the Puritans who had built up the naval supremacy
did not prevent the Caroline bishops from meeting.
But the change that passed on England during five
years of Cromwell was as nothing compared with the
transformation of America under ninety -five years of
the federal constitution. Take a single illustration.
The year 1789, the date of the Ratification of the
American Prayer Book, saw sea-island cotton first planted
in the United States, and it was about that time that up
land cotton also began to be cultivated for home and
foreign use. As the effect of this scarcely noticed ex
periment there straightway sprang up an industry, North
and South, which has been to our country almost what
her shipping interest is to Great Britain. Bishop
White and his associates were not to blame for failure
to provide bread that all this unanticipated multitude of
toilers should eat. And yet a failure there has been.
No one who has not labored at the task of trying to
commend the Church of the Prayer Book to the working
class, as it is represented in our large manufacturing
towns, can know how lamentable that failure is. We
gather in the rich and the poor, but the great middle
class that makes the staple and the strength of American
society stands aloof.

Nowhere in this country, for instance, has the Church
had a better opportunity to show what it could do for
American people than in the city of Lowell, where cot
ton spinning had its first large development. It was a
virgin soil : the Episcopal Church, as rarely happens,

AMERICAN COMMON PRAYER. 71

was earliest on the ground : and not only so, but it
enjoyed for some years the friendly protection of the
proprietors of the new settlement, almost a religious
monopoly — was, in fact, an ecclesiastical preserve.
Moreover, this beginning antedated the Irish occupation
by many years, at least so far as skilled labor was con
cerned, for during a considerable period the operatives
in the mills were of native New England stock, the best
possible material to be made over into churchmen and
churchwomen. And yet notwithstanding all this, and
notwithstanding the patient and unintermitted toil
through more than fifty years of perhaps the most la
borious parish priest on the American clergy list, the
Episcopal Church has to-day but a comparatively slen
der hold upon the affections and loyalty of the people of
this largest of the manufacturing cities of New Eng
land.

A similar failure to "reach the masses " betrays itself
in Worcester and Fall River, the two cities of like char
acter that come next in order of population, for in the
former of these last named places only about two per
cent, of the inhabitants have affiliations of any sort with
the Episcopal Church.

It was considerations of this sort, backed perhaps by
memories of the ringing appeal sounded three years
before at Boston by the Bishop of Connecticut, that
moved the Convention to interpret as something better
than a bit of sentimentalism the invitation to look the
times in the face, and give the new century its infant
baptism.

But besides all this there pressed upon the mind of
bishops and deputies a cumulative argument of a

72 REVISION OF THE

wholly different sort. The demand for revision seemed
to be closing in upon the Church on converging lines.
It was plain that, before long, hands of change must
necessarily be laid upon certain semi-detached portions
of the Prayer Book. There was the New Lectionary,
for example, that would presently be knocking for
hospitable reception within the covers, and the old
Easter Tables, as they now stand, could not, it was ob
served, last very much longer. A new book, in the
publisher's sense of that term, would soon have to be
made. The sanctity of stereotype plates must be dis
turbed. Moreover, here was an admirable opportunity
to settle the wrangle, now of nine years' standing, over
the best way of bringing to pass shortened services for
week-day use. Add to this the fact that the intrinsic
weakness of the driblet method of revision* had been

* The real argument against the " driblet method " (by which
is meant the concession of improvement only as it is actually con
quered inch by inch) lies, in what has been already said about the
undesirability of frequent changes in widely used formularies of
worship.

It may be true, as some allege, that a revision of the Prayer
Book would shake the Church, but it is more likely that half a
dozen patchings at triennial intervals would shatter it. After
twenty years of this sort of piecemeal revision, a rariorum edition
of the Prayer Book would be a requisite of every well furnished
pew.

The late Convention has been twitted with inconsistency on the
score of having negatived outright the proposal for a Commission to
overhaul the Constitution of the Church while consenting to send
the Prayer Book to a committee for review. Discernment would
be a better word than inconsistency, for although on grounds of
pure theory the Constitution and the Prayer Book seem to stand in
corresponding attitudes as respects methods of amendment, in

AMEKICAN COMMON PKAYEE. 73

made so abundantly plain that even its former friends
wisely refrained from all attempt to urge it, and our
summing up of probable motives becomes approximately
complete.

II. As to the measure of authority conferred on, and
scope allowed to the Committee of Twenty-one, it is
possible to speak with more definiteness.

A precisian might of course, were he so disposed, take
up the ground that the report of the Committee when
made ought to be monosj^llabic, " Yes" or " No." The
wording of the resolution admits of such a construction
beyond a doubt ; the Joint Committee was requested to
consider and report whether, etc., etc. But no one who
listened to the debate on the resolution could have been
left in uncertainty as to the real animus of the measure.
The thing intended to be authorized was an experimental
review, with implied reference to a limited revision at
some time future, in case the fruits of the review should
commend themselves to the mind of the Church.

practice the difference between the two is very wide. Triennial
changes in the letter of the Constitution (and these have often
been made) involve no inconvenience to anybody, for the simple
reason that that document must of necessity be reprinted with
every fresh issue of the Journal. Old copies do not continue in
use, except as books of reference, but old Prayer Books do hold
their place in parish churches, and the spectacle of congregations
trying to worship in unison with books some of which contained
the reading of 1880, others that of 1883, and still others that of 1886
would scarcely edify. Theoretically, let it be freely granted, the
"driblet method" of amendment is the proper one for both
Prayer Book and Constitution, but the fact that the Convention
had eyes to see that this was a case to which the maxims of pure
mathematics did not apply should be set down to its credit,
rather than its discredit.

74 REVISION OF THE

A distinction must be drawn between revision and re
view. Revision implies review as an antecedent step,
but review is by no means [necessarily followed by re
vision. The English book was reviewed and revised in
1662; it was reviewed but not revised in 1689. Review
is tentative and advisory; revision is authoritative and
final. In the present instance not an atom of power to
effect binding change has been conveyed. No authority
has been given to anybody to touch a line or a letter of
the Prayer Book save in the way of suggestion and
recommendation. Responsible action has been held
wholly in reserve.

Moreover, even the pathway of review was most
scrupulously hedged. Applying to the resolution the
legal maxim, expressio unius est exclusio alter ius, one
sees at a glance that doctrinal change is a matter left
wholly on one side. The two points to which the Com
mittee is instructed to bend all its studies are " liturgical
enrichment" and "increased flexibility of use." "What
soever is more than these is irrelevant. Accurate dis-
tinguishment between such "enrichments" as have and
such as have not a doctrinal bearing is, no doubt, a
delicate point, and must be set down among the difficul
ties to be encountered. As such it will be considered
further on. For the present the fact to be noted is that
the authorized reviewers are both in honor and in duty
bound to keep themselves absolutely clear of controver
sial bias. The movement is not a movement to alter
in any slightest respect the dogmatic teaching of the
Church, not a movement to unsettle foundations, not a
movement toward disowning or repudiating our past,
but simply and only an endeavor to make the Common

AMERICAN COMMON PRAYER. 75

Prayer, if possible (and we are far from being sure, as
yet, that it is possible), a better thing of its kind, more
comprehensive, more elastic, more readily responsive to
the demands of all occasions and the needs of " afll
sorts and conditions of men." Some who are deeply
persuaded that only by doctrinal revision in one direc
tion or another can the Prayer Book be made thoroughly
to commend itself to the heart and mind of the Ameri
can people will esteem the measure of change above
indicated not worth the effort indispensable to the
attainment of it. Be it so ; other some there are who
do think the attempt well advised and who are willing
to waive their own pet notions as to possible doctrinal
improvements of the book for the sake of securing a
consensus upon certain great practical improvements
which come within the range of things attainable.

Certain it is that any attempt of a body of reviewers
like this to disturb, even by " shadowed hint," the ex
isting doctrinal settlement under which we are living
together, would be resented by the whole Church.

Thei*e are divines among us who in the interest of a
more sharply defined orthodoxy are conscientiously bent
upon securing the reintroduction among our formularies
of the so-called Athanasian Creed.

Tnere are others who consider that a more damaging
blow at the catholicity of our dogmatic position as a
Church could scarcely be dealt.

Again, there are theologians who account the Prayer
Book to be so thoroughly saturated in all its parts
with the sacramental idea, that they would account it
not only a piece of far-seeing statesmanship, but also
a perfectly safe procedure to allow those who chose to

76 BE VISION OF THE

do so to thank God after a child's baptism for the
simple fact that he had thereby been " grafted into the
body of Christ's Church."

* But over against these stand a much larger number
who think nothing of the sort, and who would put up
with the liturgical shortcomings of the Prayer Book,
go without " enrichments " for a thousand years, rather
than see the single word " regenerate " dropped out of
the post-baptismal office.

Sensible men not a few are to be found who hold that
the incoming tide of host-worship with which, as they
conceive, our reformed Church is threatened can never
be stayed unless some carefully contrived definition
inserted in the Prayer Book shall make impossible this
subtile and refined species of idolatiy. But men no
whit less sensible laugh them in the face, pointing to
the " black rubric " and its history as evidence that
between the admitted doctrine of the real presence and
the disallowed tenet of transubstantiation no impervious
barrier of words can possibly be run.

These illustrations of probable divergence in opinion,
in case the field of doctrine were once entered, might
be multiplied. The retranslation of the Nicene Creed
and the more accurate punctuation of its sentences ;
the rendering of the word Sabbath in the Fourth
Commandment into its English equivalent of Rest ;
the abolition of the curious misnomer under which we
go on calling XXXVIII Articles XXXIX ; the removal
from the Catechism, or else the conversion into mother
English of that sad crux infantum, the answer to the
question, " What desirest thou of God in this prayer?"
are a few examples of less importance than those previ-

AMERICAN COMMON PRAYER. 77

ously cited ; and yet, in the case of the least of them,
it is most unlikely that the advocates of change would
have the show of hands in their favor, so sensitive is
the mind of the Church to anything that looks in the
least degree like tampering with the standards of
weight and measure, the shekels of the sanctuary.

On the other hand, there are certain manifest and
palpable instances of inaccuracy and, more rarely, in
felicity of diction which the reviewers might very
properly take occasion to amend even though such alter
ations could not be classified by a strict constructionist
under either of the two heads " enrichment " and " flexi
bility." In the masterly Report of the Rev. Dr. T. W.
Coit to the Joint Committee appointed by the Conven
tion of 1841 to prepare a Standard Prayer Book,* a
document of classical rank, there is more than one in
timation of the hope that future reviewers would be
given a larger liberty in this direction than he had him
self enjoyed. He chafed, and naturally enough, under
the necessity of reprinting in a "standard " book, evi
dent and acknowledged solecisms and blunders. " We
wanted," he says, "to correct one ungrammatical clause
in the Consecration Prayer of the Communion Service.
It is in the last sentence but one, at its close. It should
be, not that he may dwell in them and they in him ;
but, that he may dwell in us and we in him. The
prayer is made up out of two or three others ; and any
one who will examine the parts put together will easily
see how the thing was overlooked. A much greater error
was overlooked elsewhere, showing that our American

* Reprinted together with a supplementary Letter in the Journal
of the Convention of 1868.

78 REVISION OF THE

compilers were not sufficiently aware of the necessity
which requires that the Prayer Book should always be
consistent with itself. I allude to something in the
office for the Private Baptism of Children. Suppose a
clergyman to avail himself of the license given in
the Rubric after the certification. He will then be
made to talk thus : 'As the Holy Gospel doth witness
to our comfort, on this wise — Dost thou in the name of
this child,' " etc.*

Other cases of evident inaccuracy, besides those re
ferred to by this eminent critic, might be cited, even
from the latest Standard Prayer Book, that of 1871. It is
hard, for instance, to imagine even the veriest martinet
in such matters objecting to the redress of a great wrong
done on page 36 of the volume mentioned, where the
prayer " to be used at the meetings of Convention " is
entered under the general heading, " For malefactors
after condemnation." Our ecclesiastical legislators have
doubtless, like the rest of us, "erred and strayed" more
than once, but to deal out to them such harsh measure
as this is cruel.

A strange uncertainty would seem from the Rubric
to exist with reference to the limits of the Litany. On
page 554 of the Standard Prayer Book, the words, " Here
endeth the Litany," occur immediately after the prayer,
" We humbly beseech thee, O Father," while on page 31
the same statement is placed immediately after the
minor benediction.

These are not faults for which it could ever be worth
while to revise a Prayer Book, but they are blemishes

* Dr. Coil's Letter of 1868, also reprinted in Journal of that
year.

AMERICAN COMMON PRAYEE. 79

of which the revisers of a Prayer Book ought to
take note.

It is a graver matter to speak of infelicities of diction
in a book so justly famous as the Prayer Book for its
pure and wholesome English. Wordsworth's curse on

Oue who would peep and botanize
Upon his mother's grave

seems, in the judgment of many, fairly earned by the
critic, whoever he may be, who ventures to suggest that
in any slightest instance the language of the formularies
might have been more happily phrased. But there are
spots on the sun. In the prayer already referred to,
that for use " at the meetings of Convention," the peti
tion, "We beseech thee to Represent with the council
of thy Church here assembled in thy name and presence ,"
does seem open to the charge of tautology if nothing
worse.

It would be well if wherever the word occurs in the
Prayer Book in connection with Deity the anthropomor
phic plural " ears " could be replaced by the symbolic
singular " ear."

Considering also the great evil of having in a formulary
of worship too many things that have to be laboriously
explained, it might be well if in the Litany the adjective
" sudden," which ever since Hooker's day has given
perpetual occasion for cavil, were to yield to " untimely,"
or some like word more suggestive than " sudden " of
the thought clumsily expressed in the " Chapel Liturgy "
by the awkward phrase, " death unprepared for." *

* See Book of Common Prayer according to the use of King's
Chapel, Boston. Among the rhetorical crudities of this emasculated

80 REVISION OF THE

It must be again remarked that these are not points
for the sake of which word-fanciers would be justified
in disturbing an existing order of things ; they are
simply instances of lesser improvements that might very
properly accompany larger ones, should larger ones ever
be seriously undertaken.

With so many pegs upon which controversies might
be hung staring us in the face, can we think of it as at
all likely that any considerable number of Churchmen
assembled in committee (to say nothing of Convention)
will be able to agree upon a common line of action with
reference to an amendment of the formularies ?

That is the very point at issue, and how it is to be
decided only the event can show. Certainly in the roll
of the victories of charity, a favorable result, were it
achieved, would stand exceeding high.

This reflection naturally leads up to the inquiry
whether there is any special reason to consider the
present a happy moment to attempt within the limits
already defined a revision of the Prayer Book.

Prayer Book (from the title-page of which, by the way, the definite
article has been with praiseworthy truthfulness omitted) few
things are worse than the following from the form for the Burial
of Children, a piece of writing which in point of style would seem
to savor more of the Lodge than of the Church : "My brethren,
what is our life ? It is as the early dew of morning thatglittcreth
for a short time, and then is exhaled to heavent Where is the
beauty of childhood ? Where is [sic] the light of those eyes and
the bloom of that countenance ? " . . . " Who is young and who is
old? Whither are we going and what shall we become?" And
yet the author of this mawkish verbiage probably fancied that lie
was improving upon the stately English of the Common Prayer.
It is a warning to all would-be eorichers.

AMERICAN COMMON PEAYER. 81

III. The argument for timeliness has been, in part,
already stated. A revision will be timely, if the times
imperatively demand it ; and the main reasons for
thinking that they do are before the reader. Some
thing, however, is still left to be said in evidence that
the movement now begun is opportune — not rudely
thrust upon the Church. " To everything," saith the
preacher, " there is a season, and a time to every pur
pose under heaven," and among the categories that
follow this statement we find reckoned what answers to
liturgical enrichment, for " there is," he observes, " a
time to build up."

Fifty years ago a persuasive argument against at
tempting to amend the Prayer Book, either in text or
rubrics, might have been based upon the lack of hands
competent to undertake so delicate a task. Raw
material, well adapted to edification, was lying about in
blocks, but skilled workmen were scarce. This can
hardly be said to-day. Simultaneously with the begin
ning of the Oxford movement, there naturally sprang
up a fresh interest in liturgical studies, an interest
which has gone on deepening and widening until in
volume and momentum the stream has now probably
reached its outer limit. The convincing citation, " There
were giants in those days," with which a late bishop of one
of the New England dioceses used to enforce his major
premise that- wisdom died with Cranmer and his col
leagues, no longer satisfies. Probably no period of cor
responding length in the whole range of English Church
history has shown itself so rich in the fruits of liturgical
study as the fifty years that have elapsed since the
introduction into the English Parliament of the first

82 REVISION OF THE

Reform Bill.* This particular historical landmark is
mentioned on account of the close connection of cause
and effect between it and the remarkable movement set
on foot by Newman, Pusey, Keble, and Froude. To be
sure, one of the earliest utterances in the Tracts ran in
these words : " Attempts are making to get the Liturgy
altered. My dear brethren, I beseech you consider with

* A list of the more noticeable Anglican works on Liturgies
published during the period named, arranged in the order of
their appearance, will serve to illustrate the accuracy of the
statement made above, and may also be of value to the general
reader for purposes of reference.

1832. Origines Liturgicae, William Palmer. 1833-41. Tracts
for the Times. 1840. Conferences on the Book of Common
Prayer, Edward Cardwell. 1843. The Choral Service of the
Churches of England and Ireland, John Jebb. 1844. The
Ancient Liturgy of the Church of England, William Maskell.
1845. Pickering's Reprints of the Prayer Books of 1549, 1552,
1559, 1603, and 1662. 1846. Monumenta Ritualia, William
Maskell. 1847. Reliquiae Liturgicse, Peter Hall. 1848. Frag-
menta Liturgica, Peter Hall. 1849. Book of Common Prayer
with Notes legal and historical, A. J. Stephens. Manuscript
Book of Common Prayer for Ireland, A. J. Stephens. Tetra-
logia Liturgica, John Mason Neale. 1853. Two Liturgies of
Edward VI., Edward Cardwell. 1855. Principles of Divine
Service, Philip Freeman. History of the Book of Common
Prayer, F. Proctor. 1858. History of the Book of Common
Prayer, T. Lathbury. 1859. Directorium Anglicanum, J.
Purchas. 1861. Ancient Collects, William Bright. 1865. Liber
Precum Publicarum, Bright and Medd. 1865. The Priest's
Prayer Book. 1865. History of the Book of Common Prayer, R.
P. Blakeney. 1866. The Prayer Book Interleaved, Campion
and Beaumont. 1866. The Annotated Book of Common Prayer,
J. H. Blunt. 1870. The Liturgy of the Church of Sarum,
Translated, Charles Walker. 1870. The First Prayer Book of
Edward VI. with the Ordinal, Walton and Medd. 1872. Psalms

AMERICAN COMMON PRATER. 83

me whether you ought not resist the alteration of even
one jot or tittle of it." *

And yet, notwithstanding this disclaimer, one of the
main impulses that lay behind the whole movement
represented by the Tracts was an earnest desire to
quicken the life of the Church of England in the region
of worship. In the Table of the Tracts, showing their
arrangement according to Subjects, the "Liturgical"
section comes first.

The present writer acknowledges but a very limited
sympathy with the doctrinal motives and aims of
either the earlier or the later Tractarians. But let us,
above all things, be fair. With whatever prepossessions
one looks back upon it, the ground traversed by the
Church of England during the past fifty years cannot
be otherwise regarded than as a field sown with mingled
tares and wheat. Individuals will differ in judgment as
to the proportion in which these two products of a
common soil have coexisted, but even those who have
most stoutly opposed themselves to the Oxford move
ment, as a whole, are fain to credit it with, at least, this
one good result, the rescue of the usages of worship
from slovenliness and torpor, and the establishment of a

and Litanies, Rowland "Williams. 1872. Notitia Eucharistica,
W. E. Scudamore. 1875-80. Dictionary of Christian Antiquities,
Smith and Cheetham. 1876. First Prayer Book of Edward VI.,
compared with the successive Revisions, James Parker. 1877.
Introduction to the History of the successive Revisions of
the Book of Common Prayer, James Parker. 1878. Liturgies
-Eastern and Western, C. E. Hammond. 1880. The Convocation
Prayer Book.

* Tract Xo. 3. Thoughts respectfully addressed to the Clergy on
alterations in the Liturgy.

84 REVISION OP THE

better standard of what is seemly, reverent, and beauti
ful in the public service of Almighty God. Not that
there have not been, even in this respect, grave errors in
the direction of excess ; the statement ventured is sim
ply this, that, up to a certain point, all Churchmen agree
in admitting a genuine and wholesome improvement in
the popular estimate of what public worship, as such,
ought to be. An immense amount of devout study has
been given, during the period mentioned, by many able
men to liturgical subjects, and it would be strange
indeed if fifty years of searching criticism had not re
sulted in the detection of some few points in which
formularies originally compiled to meet the needs of the
sixteenth century might be better adapted to the re
quirements of the twentieth. Or, to put the same point
in another way, has not all this searching into the mines
of buried treasure, all this getting together of quarried
stone (with possibly a certain surplusage of stubble)
been so much labor lost, if there is never to come the
recognition of a ripe moment for the Church to avail
itself of the results achieved ? Are the studious toils of
a Palmer, a Maskell, a Neale, a Scudamore, and a
Bright to go for nothing except in so far as they have
been contributor}^ to our fund of ecclesiological lore ?
If so, the contempt often expressed for ritual and
liturgical studies by students busy with other lines of
research would seem to be not wholly undeserved.

A good opportunity is now before the Church to give
answer as to whether this form of investigation is or is
not anything better than a species of sacred antiquarian-
ism. Liturgiology as an aspirant for recognition among
the useful sciences may be said at the present moment

AMERICAN COMMON PRAYER. 85

to be waiting for the verdict. To be sure, it can be
asserted for liturgiology that to those who love it it is a
study that proves itself, like poetry, " its own exceeding
great reward." It is not worth while to dispute this
point. Liturgiology pursued for its own sake may not
be the loftiest of studies, but this, at least, can be said
for it, that it is a not less respectable object of pursuit
than many another specialty the devotees of which look
down upon the liturgiologist with self-complacent scorn
as a mere chiffonier. The forms which Christian wor
ship has taken on in successive generations and among
peoples of various blood are certainly as well worthy of
analysis and classification as are the flora and fauna of
Patagonia or New Zealand. But while the Patagonian
naturalist secures recognition and is decorated, every
jaunty man of letters feels at liberty to scoff at the
liturgiologist as a laborious trifler.

Moreover, remembering that in favorite studies, as in
crops, there rules a principle of rotation, fashion affect
ing even staid divines with its subtle influence, we may
look to see presently a decline of interest in this particu
lar department of inquiry. Especially may serious men
be expected to turn their attention in other directions,
should it be found that a N'on possumus awaits every
effort to make the fruits of their labor available for the
nourishment of the Church's daily life. So then, instead
of deferring action until liturgical knowledge shall
have become more widely spread, and available liturgi
cal material more abundant, we shall, if we are wise,
perceive that only t>y moving promptly will it be possi
ble in this case to take the tide at the full. Never again
will opportunity be more ripe.

8(T REVISION OF THE

Another evidence of timeliness is supplied by the
present pacific condition of the Church. Previous
movements toward liturgical revision have been of a
more or less partisan and acrimonious temper. Now for
the first time we seem to be taking up this subject with
out the expression of a fear from any quarter that if
changes are made this or that' party will get the advan
tage of some other. The peculiar conditions that en
sure this unwonted truce of God are not likely to last
forever, nor is it perhaps wholly desirable that they
should do so ; what is desirable, and very desirable, is
that we should avail ourselves of the lull to accomplish
certain changes for the better, which in ordinary times
the prevalent heat of friction makes impossible. The
Joint Committee of Twenty-one is confidently believed
to contain within itself every shade of color known to
belong to the Anglican spectrum ; if white light should
be found to emerge, three years hence, as a result of
the Committee's labors, it will be said, and truly, that
never before in our history could such a blending of the
rays possibly have taken place.

Still another consideration properly included under
the general head of timeliness is said to have been urged
with much force in the House of Bishops when the
" enrichment " resolution was under discussion.

Up to the present time the Episcopal Church of this
country has stood easily at the head in the matter of
providing for the people a dignified and beautiful order
of divine service. In fact, there has been, until lately,
no one to compete. But all this is chaifging. Ours are no
longer the only congregations in which common prayer
is to be found. It is true that thus far the attempts at

AMERICAN COMMON PRAYER. 87

imitation have been rather grotesque than formidable,
but such, until recently, have also been, in the judgment
of foreign critics, all of our American endeavors after
art. We are to consider what apt learners our quick
witted countrymen have shown themselves to be, in so
much that even Christmas Day, once the bete noire of
Puritan legislators, has come to be accounted almost a
national festival, and we shall be convinced that our
primacy in the field of liturgies is not an absolutely
assured position. This argument is open to the criticism
that it seems to lower and cheapen the whole subject by
representing Anglican religion in a mendicant attitude
bidding for the favor of the great American public, and
vexed that others, fellow-suppliants, have stolen a good
formula of appeal. Nevertheless there is a certain
amount of reasonableness in this way of putting the
thing. Certainly with those who reckon the liturgical
mode of worship among the notes of the Church, the
argument is one that ought to have marked influence ;
while with those who, not so persuaded, nevertheless
view with pleased interest the general spread of a
liturgical taste among the people of this country, seeing
in it a token of better things to come, a harbinger of
larger agreements than we have yet attained to, and of
an approaching " consolation of Israel " once not thought
possible — even with such the argument ought not to be
wholly powerless.*

* One of the most curious illustrations of the spread of Anglican
ideas about worship now in progress is to be found in the upspring-
ing in the very bosom of Scottish Presbyterianism of a CHURCH
SERVICE SOCIETY. Two of the publications of this Society have
lately fallen in the present writer's way. They bear the imprint of

88 REVISION OF THE

The fact that the Convocations of Canterbury and
York have taken in hand and carried through a revision
of the rubrics of the Prayer Book will seem to those who
hold that our Church ought to advance pari passu with
the Church of England, and no faster, another evidence
of the timeliness of the American movement. Under
the title of The Convocation Prayer Book there has
lately appeared in England an edition of the Prayer
Book so printed as to show how the book would read
were the recommendations of York and Canterbury to
go into effect. It is true that the consent of Parliament
must be secured before the altered rubrics can have the
force of law ; but whatever may come of the rubrics
recommended, the existence of the book containing
them is evidence enough of a wide-spread conviction
among the English clergy that change is needed.

Indeed never has this point been more powerfully put
in the fewest possible words than by the brilliant, and
no less logical than brilliant Bishop of Peterborough in
a recent speech in the Upper House of Convocation.*
" If the Church of England wants absolute peace, she
should have definite rubrics."

It is true he goes on to say that in his judgment the

Wm. Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh, and are entitled respectively,
A Book of Common Order, and Home Prayer. With questionable
good taste the compilers have given to the former work a Greek and
to the latter a Latin sub-title (Evxohoyurv and Suspiria Domcstica).
Both books have many admirable points, although, in view of
the facts of history, there is a ludicrous side to this attempt to
commend English viands to Northern palates under a thin garniture
of Scottish herbs which probably has not wholly escaped the
notice of the compilers themselves.
* See T/ie Guardian (London), February 9, 1881.

AMERICAN COMMON PRAYEK. 89

dangers of carrying the question of rubrical revision into
Parliament are greater than the evil of letting it alone,
but it is to be remembered that we in this country are
hampered with no Parliamentary entanglements and are
free to do of our OAvn motion, and in a quiet, orderly
way, that which the Church of England can only do at
the risk of something very like revolution.

But this matter of the rubrics and their susceptibility
of improvement will come up later on. It seemed
proper to refer to it, if no more, under the head of time
liness. If nothing else in the way of change be oppor
tune at the present moment, it is an easy task to show
that the rubrics, as they stand, cry aloud for a revision.

IV. The obstacles to be encountered by any Com
mittee undertaking so to carry forward a review of the
Prayer Book that revision may eventually result, are of
two sorts ; there are the inherent difficulties of the work
itself, such, for instance, as that of matching the literary
style of the sixteenth century writers, and there is the
wholesome dread of a change for the worse which is
sure to assert itself in many quarters the moment definite
propositions shall have reached a point at which the
"yeas and nays" are likely to be called.

Beginning, then, with the inherent difficulties, and
taking them in the inverse order of arduousness, we see
at once ho\v hard it must be to secure unity and self-
consistency in the revision of a book so complicated as
the Common Prayer. It is like remodelling an old
house. We think it a very easy matter, something that
can be done in one's head, but the mistake is discovered
when the new door designed to give symmetry to this
room is found to have spoiled the looks of that, when

90 REVISION OF THE

the enlargement of the library turns out to have over
taxed the heating energy of the fireplace, and the
ingenious staircase, instead of ending where it was
expected to end, brings up against an intractable brick
wall. Just such perils as these will beset anybody who
ventures to disturb the adjustments of the "Prayer
Book as it is " and to introduce desirable additions. But
domestic architecture is not given up on account of the
patient carefulness the practice of it demands, neither
need Liturgical Revision be despaired of because it
requires of the men who undertake it a like wisdom in
looking before and after.

The really formidable barrier to revision, so far as
what have been called the "inherent difficulties" are
concerned, is reached when we touch style. How to
handle without harming the sentences in which English
religion phrased itself when English language was
fresher and more fluent than it can ever be again is a
serious question. The hands that seek to "enrich" may
well be cautioned to take heed lest they despoil. It is
to be remembered, however, in the way of reassurance
that the alterations most likely to find favor with the
reviewers are such as will enrich by restoring lost excel
lencies, rather than by introducing forms fashioned on a
modern anvil.

The most sensitive critic could not, on the score of
taste, find fault with the replacement in the Evening
Prayer of the Magnificat and the Nimc dimittis, nor of
bringing back a few of the Versicles that in the English
book follow the Lord's Prayer, nor yet of our being
allowed to say, " Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee,
O Lord," rather than " O Lord, our Heavenly Father, by

AMERICAN COMMON PRATEE. 91

whose Almighty power we have been preserved this
day." Objections to these alterations may be readily
imagined, but it would be necessary to base them on
other grounds than those of literary fastidiousness. In
the case of enrichments like these no one could raise the
cry that the faultless English of the Prayer Book had
been marred.

But what shall be said of the composition of entirely
new services and offices, if it should be judged expedient
to give admission to any such ? How can we be sure
that such modern additions to the edifice would be suffi
ciently in keeping with the general tone of the elder
architecture? It might be held to be an adequate
answer to these questions to reply that if the living
Church cannot now trust herself to speak out through
her formularies in her natural voice as she did venture
to do in the seventeenth century and the eighteenth, it
must be that she has fallen into that stage of decrepitude
where the natural voice is uncertain.

But, really, what ought to be said is this — that if the
same canons of style that ruled the sixteenth century
writers are studied and obeyed, there is no reason in the
world why a result equally satisfactory with the one then
attained should not be reached now. There is nothing
supernatural about the English of the Prayer Book.
Cranmer and his associates were not inspired. The
prose style of the nineteenth century may not be as
good as that of the sixteenth, but, at its best, it is vastly
superior to eighteenth century style, and of this last
there are already no inconsiderable specimens in the
American Book of Common Prayer. The Office for the
Visitation of Prisoners, for example, is so redolent of

92 REVISION OF THE

the times of the Georges, when it was composed, that it
might be appropriately enough interleaved with prints
out of Hogarth. A bit of Palladian architecture in a
Gothic church is not more easily recognized. Many
worse things might happen to the Prayer Book than
that the nineteenth century should leave its impress
upon the pages.

In fact, it is just as possible, if men will only think
so, to use our language with effect for any good purpose
to-day as it was three hundred years ago. All that is
necessary is a willingness to submit to the same restric
tions, and those mostly moral, that controlled the old
writers ; and our work, though not identical with theirs,
will have the proper similarity. True, a modern author
may not be able to reproduce, without a palpable betrayal
of affectation and mannerism, the precise characteristics
of a bygone style. Chattertons are not numerous. It
is easier to secure for the brass andirons and mahogany
dining chairs of our own manufacture the look of those
that belonged to our grandfathers than it is to catch the
tones of voices long dead ; and just as good judgment
dictates the wisdom of repeating the honest and
thorough workmanship of the old cabinet-makers in
place of slavishly imitating their patterns, so it will be
well if the compilers of devotional forms for modern
use seek to say what they have to say with sixteenth
century simplicity rather than in sixteenth century
speech. In letters, as in conduct, the supreme charm of
style is the absence of self-consciousness. " Say in plain
words the thing you mean, and say it as if you meant
it," is good advice to any seeker after rhetorical excel
lence, be he young or old. The Reformers, that is to

AMERICAN COMMON* PRAYER. 93

say, the men who Englished the Prayer Book, in seeking
to meet the devotional needs of the people of their own
time do not seem to have been at pains to tie themselves
to the diction of a previous generation. They dared to
" call a spade a spade " whenever and wherever the tool
came into use, and they have their reward in the per
manence of their work. Sweetnesses and prettinesses
they banished altogether. Indeed, in those days it
seems not to have occurred to people that such things
had anything to do with religion. It was not that they
did not know how to talk in the sweet way — never has
sentimentalism been more rife in general literature than
then, but they would not talk in that way; the stern
traditions of Holy Church throughout all the world for
bade. Religion was a most serious thing to their minds,
and they would speak of it most seriously or not at all.

Never since language began to be used have severity
and tenderness been more marvellously blended than in
the older portions of the English Prayer Book.

This effect is largely due to an almost entire absten
tion on the part of the writers from figurative language,
or at least from all imagery that is not readily recog-
ni/ed as Scriptural. Bread and beef are what men de
mand for a steady diet. Sweetmeats are \vell enough,
now and then, but only now and then.

It is the failure to observe this plain canon of style
that has made shipwreck of many an attempt to con
struct liturgies de novo. Ambitious f ramers of forms of
worship seem almost invariably to forget that there may
be such a thing as a too exquisite prayer, an altogether
too "eloquent address to the throne of grace." The
longest and fullest supplicatory portion of the Prayer

94 REVISION OF THE

Book, the Litany, does not contain, from the first sen
tence to the last,* one single figurative expression, it is
literally plain English from beginning to end ; but
could language be framed more intense, more satisfying,
more likely to endure ?

Scriptural metaphor, whether because it comes to us
with the stamp of authority or on account of some
subtle intrinsic excellence, it may be difficult to say,
does not pall upon the taste. And yet even this is used
sparingly in the Prayer Book, some of the most striking
exceptions to the general rule being afforded by the
collects for the first and third Sundays in Advent, the
collects for the Epiphany and Easter Even, and the
opening prayer in the Baptismal Office. All these are
instances of strictly Scriptural metaphor, and moreover
it is to be kept in mind that they are designed for occa
sional, not constant use. In the orders for daily Morning
and Evening Prayer, the "lost sheep" of the General
Confession and the "dew" of God's blessing in the
Collect for Clergy and People are almost the sole, if not
the sole cases of evident metaphor, and these again are
Scriptural. When in Jeremy Taylor's prayer, intro
duced by the American revisers into the Order for the
Visitation of the Sick, we come upon the comparison of
human life to a " vale of misery " we feel that somehow
we have struck a new current in the atmosphere ; for
the moment it is the rhetorician who speaks, and no
longer the earnest seeker after God.

Besides this freedom from figures of speech, we
notice in the style of Prayer Book English a careful

* Unless "finally to beat down Satan under our feet," be
reckoned an exception.

AMERICAN COMMON PRAYEK. 95

avoidance of whatever looks like a metaphysical ab
straction. The aim is ever to present God and divine
things as realities rather than as mere concepts or
notions of the mind. So far as the writer remembers,
not a single prayer in the whole book begins with that
formula so dear to the makers of extemporary forms of
devotion, " O Thou." On the contrary, the approach to
the Divine Majesty is almost alwa3*s made with a refer
ence to some attribute or characteristic that links Deity
to man and man's affairs ; it is " O God, the Protector
of all that trust in thee," or " Almighty and everlasting
God who of thy tender love toward mankind," or "Lord
of all power and might who art the author and giver of
all good things."

Cardinal Newman in one of his theological works
written before his departure from the Church of Eng
land, has a powerful passage bearing upon this point.
He is criticising the evangelicals for their one-sided
way of setting forth what it must mean to " preach the
Gospel." No less a person than Legh Richmond is the
object of his strictures.

"A remarkable contrast between our Church's and
this false view of religion," he says, "is afforded in the
respective modes of treating a death-bed in the Visi
tation of the Sick, and a popular modern work, the
Dairyman's Daughter. The latter runs thus : My dear
friend, do you not FEEL that you are supported? The
Lord deals very gently with me, she replied. Are not
his promises very precious to you ? They are all yea
and amen in Christ Jesus. . . Do you experience any
doubts or temptations on the subject of your eternal
safety ? No, sir; the Lord deals very gently with me

96 REVISION OF THE

and gives me peace. What are your views of the dark
valley of death now that you are passing through it ?
It is not dark. Now, if it be said that such questions
and answers are not only in their place innocent but
natural and beautiful, I answer that this is not the
point, but this, viz., they are evidently intended, what
ever their merits, as a pattern of what death-bed exami
nations should be. Such is the Visitation of the Sick in
the nineteenth century. Now let us listen to the
nervous and stern tone of the sixteenth. In the Prayer
Book the minister is instructed to say to the person
visited : Forasmuch as after this life there is an account
to be given to the Righteous Judge ... I require you
to examine yourself and your estate both toward God
and man. Therefore I shall rehearse to you the
Articles of our Faith, that you may know whether you
do believe as a Christian man should or no. . . * Then
shall the minister examine whether he repent him truly
of his sins, and be in charity with all the world : ex-
hoi-ting him to forgive from the bottom of his heart all
persons who have offended him, and if he hath offended
any other to ask their forgiveness, and where he hath
done injury or wrong to any man that he make amends
to the utmost of his power.' . . Such is the contrast
between the dreamy talk of modern Protestantism, and
' holy fear's stern glow ' in the Church Catholic." *

In this striking, though perhaps somewhat unneces
sarily harsh way, Newman brings out a point which is
unquestionably true, namely, that the language of the
Prayer Book is of the sort which it is just now the
fashion to call realistic, that is, a language conversant
* Lectures on Justification, p 330.

AMERICAN COMMON PRAYER. 9Y

with gre.it facts rather than with phases of feeling and
moods of mind ; which after all is only another way of
sa}ring that it is a Book of Common Prayer and not a
manual for the furtherance of spiritual introspection.

These, then, are the characteristics of the Prayer Book
style : it is simple, straightforward, unmetaphorical,
realistic. Seriously it looks almost like a studied insult
alike to the scholarship and to the religion of our day, to
say that these are excellencies attainable no longer.
That revisers venturing upon additions to the Prayer
Book would be bound to set the face as a flint against
any slightest approach to sentimentality is true. But
why assume that the men do not exist who are capable
of such a measure of self-control ? Grant that there are
whole volumes of devotional matter, original and com
piled, which one may ransack without finding a single
form that is not either prolix, wishy-washy, or supersti
tious — it does not follow that if the Prayer Book is
to be enriched, the enrichments must necessarily come
from such sources. Moreover it is to be remembered
that there is another vice of style to be shunned in
liturgical composition quite as carefully as sentimen
tality, namely, jejuneness. We cannot escape being
sentimental simply by being dull. Feeling must not be
denied its place in prayer for fear that it may not prove
itself a duly chastened feeling. There ought to be a
heart of fire underneath the calm surface of every
formulary of worship. Flame and smoke are out of
place ; but a liturgy should glow throughout. Coldness,
pure and simple, has no place in devotion.

Over and above the intrinsic difficulties in the way of
revision Growing out of the delicate nature of the work

98 BE VISION OF THE

itself, obstacles of a different sort are certain to be
encountered. In so large a body of men as the Joint
Committee of the two Houses, entire and cordial agree
ment is almost too much to be expected; and then even
supposing a unanimous report submitted, what is likel}r
to follow ? Why this — if the changes proposed are few,
the cry will be raised, It surely is not worth while to
alter the Prayer Book for the sake of so insignificant a
gain ; whereas if the changes proposed are considerable,
the counter cry will be sounded, This is revolution.

Then there is the anxious question, How will it look
to the English ? What will be the effect on the Con
cordat if we touch the Prayer Book ? To be sure, the
Concordat does not seem to weigli very heavily on the
shoulders of the other party, as indeed there is no reason
why it should. Convocation does not much disturb itself
as to the view General Convention is likely to take of its
sayings and doings, and even disestablishment might
proceed without our being called into consultation.
And yet the Concordat difficulty will have to be reckoned
with ; and the dire spectre of a possible disowning of
us by our mother the Church of England will have to be
laid, before any alterations in the Book of Common
Prayer will be accounted by some among us perfectly
safe.

But it is scarcely worth while to go on gratuitous^
suggesting opposition arguments. They will be sure to
present themselves unsolicited in due time. For the
present it is enougli to add that if the movement for
liturgical revision has not in it enough toughness of
fibre to enable it to survive vigorous attack, it does not
deserve success.

AMERICAN- COMMOX PRAYER. 99

V. Under the head of liturgical enrichment ought to
be classed whatever alteration would really serve to
enhance the beauty, majesty, or fitness, of accepted
formularies of worship. Excision ma}', under conceiv
able circumstances, be enrichment. James Wyatt un
doubtedly imagined that he was improving the Eng
lish cathedrals when he whitewashed their interiors,
added composition pinnacles to the west towers of Dur
ham, and rearranged the ancient monuments of Salis
bury ; but an important part of the enrichment accom
plished by our nineteenth century restorers has lain
simply in the undoing of what Wyatt did.

Again, substitution may be enrichment, as in the case
where a wooden spire built upon a stone tower is taken
down to be replaced by honest work. It would be an
enrichment if in St. George's Chapel, the central shrine
of British royalty, the sham insignia now overhanging
the stalls of the knights of the garter were to give room
to genuine armor. Not merely then by addition, but
possibly, in some instances, by both subtraction and
substitution, we may find " the Prayer-book as it is "
open to improvement.

Before, however, entering upon any criticism of the
formularies in detail, it is important to draw a distinc
tion between two very different things, namely, the
structure of a liturgical office and the contents of it.
By structure should be understood the skeleton or frame
that makes the groundwork of any given office, by con
tents the actual liturgical material employed in filling
out the office to its proper contour.

The offices of the Roman Breviary, for example, con
tinue, for the most part, identical in structure from day

100 REVISION OF THE

to day, the year through ; but they vary in contents.
For an illustration nearer home take our own Order for
Daily Morning Prayer. The structure of it is as fol
lows : 1. Sentences, 2. Exhortation, 3. Confession, 4.
Absolution, 5. Lord's Prayer, 6. Versicles, 7. Invitatory
Psalm, 8. The Psalms for the day, 9. Lection, 10.
Anthem or Canticle, 11. Lection, 1 2. Anthem or Canticle,
13. Creed, 14. Versicles, 15. Collect for the day, 16.
Stated Collects and Prayers, 17. Benediction.

Now it is evident that without departing by a hair's
breadth from the lines of this framework, an indefinite
number of services might by a process of substitution
be put together, each one of which would in outward
appearance differ widely from eveiy other one. The
identical skeleton, that is to say, might be so variously
clothed upon that no two of its embodiments would be
alike. But is it desirable to run very much after variety
of such a sort in a book of prayer designed for common
use ? Most assuredly, No. To jeopard the supreme
desideratum in a people's manual of worship, simplicity :
to make it any harder than it now is for the average
" stranger in the Church " to find the places, would be on
the part of revisionists an unpardonable blunder.

There are, however, a few points at which the Morn
ing Prayer might advantageously be enriched, and no
risk run. It would surely add nothing to the difficulty
of finding the places if for one-half of the present
opening sentences there were to be substituted sentences
appropriate to special days aud seasons of the ecclesias
tical year. We should in this way be enabled to give
the key-note of the morning's worship at the very out
set. Having once departed, as in the case of our first

AMERICAN COMMON PRAYER. 101

two sentences, from the English precedent of putting
only penitential verses of Scripture to this use, there is
no reason why we should not carry out still more fully
in our selection the principle of appropriateness. The
sentences displaced need not be lost, for they might
still stand, as now, at the opening of the Evening Prayer.

Passing on to the declai'ations of absolution there is
an opportunity to simplify the arrangement by omitting
the alternate form borrowed from the Order for the
Administration of the Lord's Supper, where only it
properly belongs. This, however, is a change likely to
be resisted on doctrinal grounds, and need not be urged.

Coming to the Venite, we find another opportunity
to accentuate the Christian Year. It may be said that
the rubric, as it is already written, allows for the sub
stitution of special anthems on the greater festivals and
fasts. This is true ; but by giving the anthem for
Easter a place of honor, while relegating anthems for
the other great days to an unnoticed spot between the
Selections and the Psalter, the American compilers did
practically discriminate in favor of Easter and against
the rest. The real needs of the case would be more
wisely met if the permission to omit Venite now at
tached to " the nineteenth day of the month " were to
be extended to Ash-Wednesdaj' and Good Friday, and
special New Testament anthems analagous to the Easter
one were to be inserted along with the respective Col
lects, Epistles, and Gospels, for Christmas-day and
Whitsunday.

By this change we should put each of the three great
festivals of the year into possession of an invitatory an
them of its own ; and we should obviate on the fasting

102 REVISION OF THE

days, by the simple expedient of omission, the futile
efforts of choir-master and organist to transform Venite
from a cry of joy into a moan of grief.

This brings us to the Psalter. Here we have an
opportunity to correct the palpable blunder by which it
has come about that the greatest of the penitential
psalms, the fifty-first, has no place assigned it among
the proper psalms either for Ash-Wednesday or for Good
Friday.* It would also be well to make optional, if not
obligatory, the use of " proper psalms " on days other
than those already provided with them; e. g., Advent
Sundaj', the Epiphany, Easter Even, Trinity Sunday, and
All Saints' Day.f There would be a still larger gain in
the direction of " flexibility of use," as well as a great
economy of valuable space, if instead of reprinting some
thirty of the Psalms of David under the name of Selec
tions, we were to provide for allowing " select " psalms
to be announced by number in the same manner that
" proper " psalms are now announced. Instead of only
the ten selections we now have, there might then be
made available twenty or thirty groups of psalms at
absolutely no sacrifice of room. It has been objected to
this proposal that the same difficulty which now attaches
to the finding of the "proper psalms" on great days
would embarrass congregations whenever " select

* The rationale of this curious lapse is simple. The American
revisers, instead of transferring the Comminatiou Office in toto to
the new book, wisely decided to engraft certain features of it upon
the Morning Prayer for Ash- Wednesday. In the process, the
fifty-first Psalm, which has a recognized place in the Commina-
tion, dropped out, instead of being transferred, as it should have
been, to the proper psalms.

•j- See the Convocation Prayer Book.

AMERICAN COMMON PRATER. 10S

psalms " were given out ; but this is fairly met by the
counter consideration that if our people were to be edu
cated by the use of select psalms into a more facile
handling of the Psalter it would be just so much gained
for days when the " proper psalms " must of necessity
be found and read. The services, that is to say, would
run all the more smoothly on the great days, after con
gregations had become habituated, on ordinary days, to
picking out the psalms by number.

Another step in the line of simplification, and one
which it is in order to mention here, would be the re
moval from the Morning Prayer of Gloria in JZxcelsis,
seeing that it is never, or almost never, sung at the end
of the psalms unless at Evening Prayer. As to the ex
pediency of restoring what has been lost of JBenedictus
after the second lesson, the present writer offers no
opinion. There are some who warmly advocate the re
placement, and there is, unquestionably, much to be
said in favor of it. It is unlikely that any doctrinal
motive dictated the abbreviation.

Pausing a moment at the Creeds for the insertion of a
better title than " Or this " before the confession of
Nicsea, we pass to the versicles that follow.

Here again it would be enrichment to restore the
words of the English book, although the task of finding
an equally melodious equivalent for 0 JLord, save the
Queen might not be easy.

Happily the other versicles are such as no civil rev
olution can make obsolete. It will never be amiss to
pray,

Endue thy ministers with righteousness.
Answer. And make thy chosen people joyful.

104 BEVISION OF THE

These are all the alterations for which the present
Morning Prayer considered as a form of Divine Service
for Sundays would seem to call. It will be observed
that they are far from being of a radical character, that
they affect the structure of the office not at all, and
touch the contents of it but slightly.

The case is altered when we come to the Order for
Evening Prayer. Here there is a demand, not indeed
for any structural change, but for very decided enrich
ment by substitution. The wording of the office is alto
gether too exact an echo of what has been said only a
few hours before in Morning Prayer. It betokens a
poverty of resources that does not really exist, when we
allow ourselves thus to exhort, confess, absolve, inter
cede, and give thanks in the very same phrases at three
in the afternoon that were on our lips at eleven in the
morning.

Doubtless liturgical worship owes a good measure of
its charm to the subtle power of repetition ; but the
principle is one that must be handled and applied with
the most delicate tact, or virtue goes out of it. We
must distinguish between similarity and sameness. The
ordered recurrence of accents is what makes the rhythm
of verse ; but for all that, there is a difference between
poetry and sing-song, just as there is a difference between
melody and monotony. Moreover, the taste of mankind
undergoes change as to the sorts of repetition which it
is disposed to tolerate. No modern poet of standing
would venture, for instance, to employ identical epithets
to the extent that Homer does, making Aurora "rosy-
fingered " every time she appears upon the scene, and
Juno as invariably " ox-eyed." People were pleased with

. AMERICAN COMMON PRATER. 105

it then, they would not be pleased with it now. It is
possible in liturgies so to employ the principle of repeti
tion that no wearying sense of sameness will be con
veyed, and again it is possible so to mismanage it as to
transform worship into something little better than a
" slow mechanic exercise." Mere iteration, as such, is
barren of spiritual power ; witness the endless sayings
over of Kyrie Eleison in the Oriental service-books, a
species of vain repetition which a liturgical writer of
high intelligence rightly characterizes as " unmeaning,
if not profane." * Now the common popular criticism
upon the Evening Prayer of the Church is that it repeats
too slavishly the wording of the Morning Prayer. If
this is an unjust criticism we ought not to let ourselves
be troubled by it. On the other hand, if it is a just
criticism it will be much wiser of us to heed than to
stifle the voice that tells us the truth. It might seem
to be straining a point were one to venture to explain
the present very noticeable disinclination of Churchmen
to attend a second service on Sunday, by connecting it
with the particular infelicity in question ; but that the
excuse, We have said all this once to-day ; why say it
again ? may possibly have something, even if not much,
to do with the staying at home is certainly a fair con
jecture.

Without altering at all the structure of the Evening
Prayer, it would be perfectly possible so to refill or re-
clothe that formulary as to give it the one thing needful
which now it lacks — freshness. In such a process the
Magnificat and the Nunc dimittis would play an impor
tant part ; as would also certain " ancient collects " of
* Prayer Book Interleaved, p. 65.

106

REVISION OF THE

which we have heard much of late. Failing this, the
next best thing (and the thing, it may be added, much
more likely to be done, considering what a tough resist
ant is old usage) would be the provision of an alternate
and optional form of Evening Prayer, to be used either
in lieu of, or as supplementary to the existing office.
In the framing of such a Later Evensong a larger free
dom would be possible than in the refilling of a form
the main lines of which were already fixed. Still, the
first plan would be better, if only it could be brought
within the range of things possible.

Next to Evening Prayer in the order of the Table of
Contents comes the Litany. Here there is no call for
enrichment,* though increased flexibility of use might

* A curious illustration of the sensitiveness of the Protestant
Episcopal mind to anything that can be supposed even remotely
to endanger our doctrinal settlement was afforded at the late Gen
eral Convention, when the House of Deputies was thrown into
something very like a panic by a most harmless suggestion with
reference to the opening sentences of the Litany. A venerable
and thoroughly conservative deputy from South Carolina had
ventured to say that it would be doctrinally an improvement if
the tenet of the double procession of the Holy Ghost were to be
removed from the third of the invocations, and a devotional
improvement if the language of the fourth were to be phrased in
words more literally Scriptural and less markedly theological than
those at present in use. Eager defenders of the faith instantly
leaped to their feet in various parts of the House, persuaded that
a deadly thrust had been aimed at the doctrine of the Trinity.
Never was there a more gratuitous misconception. The real in-
trenchment of the doctrine of the Trinity, so far as the Litany is
concerned, lies in the four opening words of the second and the
five opening words of the third of the invocations, and these it had
not been proposed to touch. In confirmation of this view of the

AMERICAN COMMON PKAYEB. 107

be secured for this venerable form of intercessory prayer
by prefixing to it the following rubric abridged from a
similar one proposed in The Convocation Praj'er Book :

" A General Supplication, to be sung or said on Sun
days, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and on the Rogation
Days, after the third collect at Morning or Evening
Prayer, or before the Administration of the Holy Com
munion y or as a separate Service.

"NOTE. — The Litany may be omitted altogether on
Christmas Day, Easter Day, and Wliitsunday"

In connection with the Morning and Evening Service
there is another important question that imperatively

matter, it is pertinent to instance the Book of Family Prayers lately
put forth by a Committee of the Upper House of the Convocation
of Canterbury. This manual provides no fewer than six different
Litanies, all of them opening with addresses to the three Persons
of the adorable Trinity, and yet in no one instance is the principle
advocated by the deputy from South Carolina unrecognized.
Every one of the six Litanies begins with language similar to that
which he recommended. [See also in witness of the mediaeval
use, which partially bears out Mr. McCrady's thought, the ancient
Litany reprinted by Maskell from The Prymer in English. Mon.
Rit. ii. p. 95.] If the Upper House of the Convocation of Canter
bury, fondly supposed by us Anglicans to be the very citadel of
sound doctrine, be thus tainted with heresy, upon what can we
depend ?

Polemical considerations aside, probably even the most orthodox
would allow that the invocations of the Litany might gain in de
votional power, while losing nothing in august majesty, were the
third to run — 0 God the Holy Ghost, Sanctifier of the faithful,
hare mercy upon us miserable sinners. And the fourth as in Bishop
Heber's glorious hymn, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty,
have mercy upon us miserable sinners. But all this is doctrinal and
plainly ultra vires.

108 REVISION OF THE

demands discussion, namely, a week-day worship. The
movement for " shortened services," so-called, has shared
the usual fate of all efforts at bettering the life of
the Church, in being at the outset of its course widely
and seriously misunderstood. The impression has gone
abroad, and to-day holds possession of many otherwise
well-informed people, that a large and growing party in
the Episcopal Church has openly declared itself wearied
out with overmuch prayer and praise. Were such in
deed the fact, the scandal would be grave ; but the real
truth about the matter is that the promoters of short
ened services, instead of seeking to diminish, are really
eager to see multiplied the amount of worship rendered
in our churches. " Shortened services " is a phrase of
English, not American origin, and has won its wa}r
here by dint of euphony rather than of fitness. Read
justed services, though a more clumsy, would be a less
misdirecting term. In the matter of Sunday worship,
the liberty now generally conceded of using separately
the Morning Prayer, the Litany, and the Holy Com
munion is all that need be asked. Whether these ser
vices, or at least two of them, do not in themselves ad
mit of a certain measure of improvement is a point that
has already been considered, but there certainly is no
need of shortening them, whatever else it may be
thought well to do. When what a Boston worthy once
termed "a holy alacrity " is observed, on the part of
both minister and singers, even the aggregated services
of Morning Prayer, Litany, and " Ante-Communion,"
together with a sermon five-and-twenty minutes long,
can easily be brought within the compass of an hour and
a half — a measure of time not unreasonably large to be

AMERICAN COMMON PRAYER. 109

given to the principal occasion of worship on the Lord's
Day. As for the Evening Prayer — there certainly
ought to be no call for the shortening of that on
Sundays ; for it would be scarcely decent or proper to
devote to such a service anything less than the half
hour the existing office demands.

What the advocates of shortened services really desire
to see furthered is an increase in the frequency of op
portunities for worship during the week, their con
viction being that if the Church were to authorize brief
services for morning and evening use, such as would not
occupy much more time than family prayers ordinarily
do, the attendance might be secured of many who, at
present, put aside the whole question of going to church
on week-days as impracticable. Supposing it could be
proved that such a provision would work to the dis
couragement of family prayer, it would plainly be
wrong to advocate it ; no priesthood is more sacred
than that which comes with fatherhood. But we must
face the fact that in our modern American life family
prayer, like sundry other wholesome habits, has fallen
largely into disuse. If the Church can, in any measure,
supplement the deficiencies of the household, and help
to supply to individuals a blessing they would gladly
enjoy at their own homes, if they might, it is her plain
duty to <lo so. Moreover, many a minister who single-
handed cannot now prudently undertake a daily service,
as that is commonly understood, would acknowledge
himself equal to the less extended requirement.

Not a few careful and friendly observers of the prac
tical working of Anglican religion have been reluctantly
led to consider the daily service, as an institution, only

110 REVISION OF THE

meagrely successful. Looking at the matter historically
we find no reason to wonder at such a conclusion.

Our existing usage (or more correctly, perhaps, non-
user) dates from the Reformation period. The English
Church and nation of that day had grown up familiar
with the spectacle of a very large body of clerics, secu
lar and regular, whose daily occupation may be said to
have been the pursuit of religion.* The religion pur
sued consisted chiefly in the saying of prayers, and very
thoroughly, so far at least as the consumption of time
was concerned, were the prayers said. What more nat
ural than that, under such circumstances, and with such
associations, the compilers of a common Prayer Book
for the people should have failed to see any good reason
for discriminating between the amount of service proper
to the Lord's Day and the amount that might be reason
ably expected on other days ? Theoretically they were
right, all time belongs to God and he is as appropriately
worshipped on Tuesdays and Thursdays as on Sundays.
And yet as a result of their making no such discrimina
tion, we have the daily service on our hands — a compar
ative, even if not an utter failure. We may lament the
fact, but a fact it is, that in spite of all its improved
appliances for securing leisure, the world is busier than
ever it was ; and there will always be those who will
insist that the command to labor on six days is as im
perative as the injunction to rest upon the seventh. As
a consequence of all this accelerated business, and of the
diminution in the number of persons officially set apart

* A very natural explanation, by the way, of the fact, often
noticed, that there is no petition in the Litany for an increase of
the ministry.

AMERICAN COMMON PRAYER. Ill

for prayer, the unabridged service of the Church fails to
command a week-day attendance. We have no " clerks "
nowadays to fill the choir. The only clerks known to
modern times are busy at their desks.

It may be urged in reply to this that the practical
working of the daily service ought to be kept a second
ary consideration, and that its main purpose is sym
bolical, or representative ; the priest kneeling in his
place, day by day, as a witness that the people, though
unable personally to be present, do, in heart and mind,
approve of a daily morning and evening sacrifice of
prayer. This conception of the daily service as a
vicarious thing has a certain mystical beauty about it,
but if it is to be adopted as the Church's own let us, at
least, clear ourselves of inconsistency by striking out
the word " common " from before the word " pi'ayer "
in characterizing our book.

What is really needed for daily use in our parishes is
a short form of worship specially framed for the pur
pose. If they could be employed without offence to the
Protestant ear (and they are good English Reformation
words) Week-Day Matins and Week-Day Evensong
would not be ill chosen names for such services. The
framework of these Lesser Orders for Morning and
Evening Prayer, as they might also be called, were
the other titles found obnoxious, ought to be modelled
upon the lines of the existing daily offices, though with
a careful avoidance of identity in contents. There
should be, for instance, as unvarying elements, the read
ing of the lessons for the day, the use of the collect for
the day, and the saying or singing of the psalms for the
day. Another constant would be the Lord's Prayer ;

112 REVISION OF THE

but aside from these the Lesser Order need have noth-
in common with the Order as we have it now. There
might be, for example, after the manner of the old ser
vice-books, an invitatory opening with versicles and
responses, or if the present mode of opening by sen
tences were preferred, specially chosen sentences, differ
ent from those with which the Sunday worship has
made us familiar, could be employed. Moreover, the
anthems or canticles and the prayers, with the exception
of the two just mentioned, ought also to be distinctive,
and, in the technical sense of the word, proper to the
week-day use.

Again, it would serve very powerfully and appro
priately to emphasize the pivot points in the ritual year
if this same principle were to be applied to saints' days,
and we were to have special Holy day Matins and Holy-
day Evensong, there still being required, on the greater
festivals and fasts, the normal Morning and Evening
Prayer proper to the Lord's Day.*

The argument in favor of thus specializing the ser
vices for week-da}rs and holydays, in preference to fol-

* Here, i. e., in connection with Saints' Day services, would be
an admirable opportunity for the introduction into liturgical use
of the Beatitudes. What could possibly be more appropriate ?
And yet these much loved words of Christ have seldom been
given the place in worship they deserve.

They do find recognition as an antiphon in the Liturgy of
St. Chi'ysostom. To reassert a usage associated in the history of
liturgies with the name of this Father of the Church and with his
name only, would be to pay him better honor than we now show
by three times inserting in our Prayer Book the collect conjectu-
rally his — a thing the Golden-mouthed himself, when in the flesh,
would not have dreamed of doing. " Once," he would have said,
" is enough."

AMERICAN COMMON PRAYER. 113

lowing the only method heretofore thought possible,
namely, that of shortening the Lord's Day Order, rests
on two grounds. In the first place permissions to skip
and omit are of themselves objectionable in a book of
devotions. They have an uncomely look. Our Ameri
can Common Prayer boasts too many disfigurements of
this sort already.

Such a rubric as The minister may, at his discretion,
omit all that follows to, etc., puts one in mind of the
finger-post pointing out a short cut to weary travellers.
It is inopportune thus to hint at exhaustion as the prob
able concomitant of worship. That each form should
have an integrity of its own, should as a separate
whole be either said complete or left unsaid, is better
liturgical philosophy than any "shortened services act "
can show.

In the second place, a certain amount of variety would
be secured by the proposed method which under the
existing system we miss. There is, of course, such a
danger as that of providing too much liturgical variety.
Amateur makers of Prayer Books almost invariably fall
into this slough. Hymn-books, as is well known, often
destroy their own usefulness by including too many
hymns; and Prayer Books may do the same by having
too many prayers.*

To transgress in the compiling of formularies the line
of average memory, to provide more material than the
mind of an habitual worshipper is likely to assimilate, is
to misread human nature. But here, as elsewhere, there
is a just mean. Cranmer and his colleagues in the work
of revision jumped at one bound from a scheme which

* Tlie Priest's Prayer Book has 688 (!!) mostly juiceless.

114 REVISION OF THE

provided a distinctive set of services for every day in
the year to a scheme that assigned one stereotyped form
to all days.

Now nothing could be more unwise than any attempt
to restore the methods of the Breviary, with its compli
cated and artificial forms of devotion; but so far to
imitate the Breviary as to provide within limits for a
recognition of man's innate love of change would be
wisdom. By having a distinctive service for week-days,
and a distinctive service for holydays, we might add
just that little increment to the Church's power of trac
tion that in many instances would avail to change"!
cannot go to church this morning " into " I cannot stay
away."

It will be urged as a counter-argument to these con
siderations that the thing is impossible, that such a
measure of enrichment is entirely in excess of anything
the Church has expressed a wish to have, and that for
reviewers to propose a plan so sweeping would be sui
cide. Doubtless this might be a sufficient answer to
anybody who imagined that by a bare majority vote of
two successive General Conventions new formularies of
daily worship could be forced upon the Church. But
suppose such formularies were to be made optional ;
suppose there were to be given to parishes the choice
between these three things, viz.: (a) the normal Morn
ing Prayer ; (b) a shortened form of the normal Morn
ing Prayer; and (c) such a special order as has been
sketched — what then ? Would the Church's liberty be
impaired! On the contrary, would not the borders of
that liberty have been most wisely and safely widened
by the steady hand of law ?

AMERICAN COMMON PRAYER. 11.5

This is perhaps the right point at which to call atten
tion to the present state of the "shortened services"
controversy, for wearisome as the story has become by
frequent repetition, the nexus between it and the subject
in hand is too important to be left out of sight.

In the General Convention of 1877, where the topic
under its American aspects was for the first time thor
oughly discussed, the two Houses came to a deadlock.
The deputies on the one hand, almost to a man, voted
in favor of giving the desired relief by rubric, thus post
poning for three years' time the fruition of their wish;
while the bishops with a unanimity understood to have
been equally striking insisted that a simple canon, such
as could be passed at once, would suffice. And so the
subject dropped.

At the late Convention of 1880 an eirenicon was dis
covered. The quick eye of one of the legal members of
the House of Deputies detected on the fourth page of
the Prayer Book, just opposite the Preface, a loop
hole of escape, to wit, The Ratification of the Book of
Common Prayer. Here was the very tertium quid
whereby the common wish of both parties to the dis
pute might be effected without injury to the sensibili
ties of either.

The Ratification certainly did not look like a canon;
neither could anybody with his eyes open call it a rubric
— why not amend that, and say no more about it ? The
suggestion prevailed, and by a vote of both Houses,
the following extraordinary document is hereafter to
stand (the next General Convention consenting) in the
very fore-front of the Prayer Book :

THE RATIFICATION OF THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER.

116 REVISION OF THE

By the Bishops, the Clergy, and the Laity of the Prot
estant Episcopal Church in General Convention assem
bled.

11 The General Convention of the Church having
heretofore, to wit : on the sixteenth day of October in
the year A. D. 1789, set forth a Book of Common
Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and other
Rites and Ceremonies of the Church, and thereby estab
lished the said book, and declared it to be the Liturgy
of said Church, and required that it be received as such
by all the members of the same and be in use from and
after the first day of October in the year of our Lord
1790 ; the same book is hereby ratified and confirmed,
and ordered to be the use of this Church from this time
forth.

" But note, however, that on days other than Sundays,
Christmas-day, the Epiphany, Ash-Wednesday, Good
Friday, and Ascension Day, it shall suffice if the Minister
begins Morning or Evening Prayer at the General Con
fession or the Lord's Prayer preceded by one or more
of the Sentences appointed at the beginning of Morning
and Evening Prayer, and end after the Collect for Grace
or the Collect for Aid against Perils, with 2 Cor. xiii. 14,
using so much of the Lessons appointed for the day and
so much of the Psalter as he shall judge to be for edifi
cation.

" And note also that on any day when Morning and
Evening Prayer shall have been duly said or are to be
said, and on days other than those first aforementioned,
it shall suffice, when need may require, if a sermon or
lecture be preceded by at least the Lord's Prayer and
one or more Collects found in this book, provided that

AMERICAN COMMON PRAYER. 117

no prayers not set forth in said book, or otherwise
authorized by this Church, shall be used before or
after such sermon or lecture.*

" And note further also that on any day the Morning
Prayer, the Litany, or the Order for the Administration
of the Lord's Supper may be used as a separate and in
dependent service, provided that no one of these services
shall be disused habitually."

It may seem harsh to characterize this act as the
mutilation of a monument ; but really it does seem to
be little else. The old Ratification of 1789 is an historic
landmark ; it is the sign-manual of the Church of

* la connection with this clause there sprang up an animated
and interesting debate in the House of Deputies as to the wisdom
of thus seeming to cut off every opportunity for extemporary
prayer in our public services. Up to this time, it was alleged, a
liberty had existed of using after sermon, if the preacher were
disposed to do so, the " free prayer " which before sermon it was
confessedly not permitted him to have — why thus cut off peremp
torily an ancient privilege ? why thus sharp]}' annul a traditional
if not a chartered right ?

At first sight this distinction between before and after sermon
looks both arbitrary and artificial, but when examined there is
found to be a reason in it. The sermon, especially in the case of
emotional preachers, is a sort of bridge of transition from
what we may call the liturgical to the spontaneous mood of mind,
and if the speaker has carried his listeners with him they are
across the bridge at the same moment with himself. The thing that
would have been incongruous before, becomes natural after the
minister has been for some time speaking less in his priestly than
in his personal character.

The notion that the points at issue between the advocates of
liturgical and the advocates of extemporaneous worship can be
settled by a promiscuous jumbling together of the two modes, is a
fond conceit, as the Reformed Episcopalians will doubtless confess

118 EE VISION OP THE

White's and Seabury's day, and ought never to be dis
turbed or tampered with while the Prayer Book stands.
The year 1889 might very properly see a supplemental
Ratification written under it ; and testifying to the fact
of Revision ; but to write into that venerable text

when they shall have had time enough to make full trial of the
following rubrics in their Prayer-book :

T Then shall tlie Minister say the Collects and Prayers following
in whole or in part, or ottiers at his discretion.
*[[ Here may be used any of the occasional Prayers, or extem
poraneous Prayer.

This is bad philosophy. It need not be said that such direc
tions are undevotional — for doubtless they were piously meant ;
but it must be said that they are inartistic (if the word may be
allowed), at variance with the fitness of things and counter to the
instinct of purity. Formality and informality are two things that
cannot be mingled to advantage. There is place and time for
each. The secret of the power of liturgical worship is wrapped
up with the principle of order. A certain majesty lies in the
movement which is without break. On the other hand the charm
of extemporaneous devotion, and it is sometimes a very real
charm, is traceable to our natural interest in whatever is irregular,
fresh, and spontaneous.

To suppose that we can secure at any given time the good
effects of both methods by some trick of combination is an
error — as well attempt to arrange on the same plot of ground a
French and an English garden. If indeed Christian people could
bring themselves to acknowledge frankly the legitimacy of both
methods and provide amicably for their separate use, a great step
forward in the direction of Church unity would have been
achieved ; but for a catholicity so catholic as this, public opinion
is not yet ripe, and perhaps may not be ripe for centuries to
come. Those who believe in the excellency of liturgies, while
not believing in them as jure dixino, would be well content in
such a case to wait the working of the principle of the survival of
the fittest.

AMERICAN COMMON PEATEE. 119

special directions as to what may be done on days other
than Ash-Wednesday, and what must not be done without
2 Cor. xiii. 14, is very much as if the City Government
of Cambridge should cause to be cut upon the stone
under the Washington elm which now records the fact
that there the commander of the American armies first
drew his sword, divers and sundry additional items of
information, such as the distance to Watertown, the
shortest path across the common, etc., etc.

Why the Convention after having entrusted to a Joint
Committee, by a decisive vote, the task of devising
means for securing for the Prayer Book " increased
flexibility of use," should have thought it necessary sub
sequently to take up with this compromise of a com
promise (for such the proposal to amend the Ratification
really is) it is difficult to say. Perhaps it was with the
determination to have, at any rate, something to fall
back upon in case the larger and more comprehensive
measure should come to naught.

The rubric is confessedly the proper place for direc
tions as to how to use the services, and but for the very
natural and defensible objection on the part of some to
touching the Prayer Book at all, there never would have
been any question about it.* This objection having

* The able and fair-minded jurist \vlio first hit upon this
ingenious scheme for patching the Ratification has lately, with
characteristic frankness, said substantially this under his own
signature.

"The proper place for the amendment," he writes, "is at the
end of the first rubric preceding the sentences of Scripture for both
Morning and Evening Prayer, after the word Scripture, as every
one can see by looking." He adds: "This, however, is only a
question of form, aud ought not to interfere with the adoption of

120 REVISION OF THE

been at last waived, a straight path is now open to the
end desired, and it ought to be followed even at the
cost of three years more of delay.

Returning to the general subject, and still following
the order of the Table of Contents, we come to Prayers
and Thanksgivings upon several Occasions.

Here it would be well to note more intelligibly than
is done by the present rubric the proper places for the
introduction of the Prayers and the Thanksgivings,
providing for the use of the former before, and of the
latter after the General Thanksgiving.

As to the deficiencies in this department let the late
Dr. Muhlenberg speak.

" The Prayer Book," he says, " is not undervalued as
to its treasures in asserting its wants. The latter can
not be denied. Witness the meagre amount of New
Testament prayer and praise for the round of festivals
and fasts ; the absence of any forms suited to the pecul
iar circumstances of our own Church and country and
to the times we live in ; or for our benevolent and edu
cational institutions. There are no prayers for the
increase of Ministers, for Missions, or Missionaries, for
the Christian teaching of the young ; for sponsors on
occasions of Baptism ; for persons setting out on long
journeys by land, quite as perilous as voyages by sea ;

the amendment at the next Convention. It is to be hoped that
the resolution for enrichment, so called, will present a variety
of additions out of which an acceptable selection can be made ;
and when they are finally carried that the Book of Common
Prayer will be not only the standard book, but a sealed book, so
to speak, for as many generations as have passed since the
present book was adopted." — Letter of the Hon. J. B. Howe of
Indiana in Tue Churchman for January 29, 1881,

AMERICAN COMMON PEAYER. 121

for the sick desiring the prayers of the Church when
there is no prospect of or desire for recovery ; for the
bereaved at funerals, and many other occasions for
which there might as well be provision as for those few
for which we alread}r have the occasional prayers."*

After the Prayers and Thanksgiving* come Tlie
Collects, Episths, and Gospels. Here again there is
some room for enrichment. Distinctive collects for the
first four days of Holy Week, for Monday and Tuesday
in Easter Week, and for Monday and Tuesday in Whit-
sun Week, Avould add very materially to our liturgical
wealth, while there would seem to be no reason what
ever why they should not be had. It would also serve
to enhance the symmetry of the Christian Year if the
old feast of the Transfiguration f (August 6) were to be
restored to its place among the recognized holy days of
the Church and given its proper collect, epietle, and
gospel.

There are some liturgists who desire the restoration
of the introits of the First Book of Edward VI. The

* See page 578 of Evangelical Catholic Papers. A collection
of Essays, Letters, and Tractates from Writings of Rev. "Wm.
Augustus Muhlenberg, D. D., during the last forty years.

The failure of this devout and venerated man to secure sundry
much desired liturgical improvements (although it yet remains to
be seen whether the failure has been total) was perhaps due to a
certain vagueness inherent in his plans of reform. A clear vision
of the very thing desired seems to have been lacking, or at least
the gift of imparting it to others. But even as no man has de
served better of the American Episcopal Church than he, so it is
no more than right that his deeply cherished wishes should be had
in careful remembrance.

f Now a " black-letter day" in the English Calendar.

122 REVISION OF THI

introit (so called from being the psalm sung when the
priest goes within the altar-rails) has been in modern
usage replaced by a metrical hymn. A sufficient reason
for not printing the introit for each day in full, just
before the collect, as was the mode in Edward's Book, is
that to do so would involve a costly sacrifice of room.
A compromise course would be to insert between the
title of each Sunday or holyday and the collect proper
to it, a simple numerical reference stating whereabouts
in the Psalter the introit for the day is to be found, and
adding perhaps the Latin catchwords. Any attempt to
make the use of the introit obligatoiy in our times would
meet with deserved failure ; the metrical hymn has
gained too firm a hold upon the affections of the Church
at large ever to be willingly surrendered.

Coming, next, to the orders for the administration of
the two sacraments, we find ourselves on delicate ground,
where serious change of any sort is out of the question.
Permission, under certain circumstances, still further to
abbreviate the Office of the Communion of the Sick
might, however, be sought without giving reasonable
cause of alarm to any, and general consent might per
haps also be had for a provision with respect to the
Exhortation, "Dearly beloved in the Lord," that in
" Churches where there is frequent Communion it shall
suffice to read the Exhortation above written once in a
month on the Lord's Day." *

There are three liturgical features of the Scottish

Communion Office which some have thought might be

advantageously transferred to our own service. They

are (a) the inserting after Christ's summary of the Law

* The Convocation Prayer Book, in loc.

AMERICAN COMMON PRAYER. 123

a response, Lord, have mercy upon us and write these
thy laws in our hearts, we beseech thee ; (b) the repeating
by the people, after the reading of the Gospel, of a for
mula of thanks corresponding to the Glory be to thee, 0
Lord, that precedes it ; and (c) the saying or singing of
an Offertory sentence at the presentation of the alms.
Upon these suggested enrichments the present writer
offers no opinion.

In the Order of Confirmation a substitution for the
present preface * of a responsive opening, in which the
bishop should charge the minister to present none but
such as he has found by personal inquiry " apt and
meet " for the reception of the rite would be a marked
improvement.

The remaining Occasional Offices would seem to de
mand no change either in structure or contents, although
in some, perhaps in all of them, additional rubrics would
be helpful to worshippers.

Some addition to the number of Occasional Offices
would be a real gain. We need, for instance, a short
Office for the Burial of Infants and Young Children ; a
Daybreak Office for Great Festivals ; an Office for Mid
day Prayer ; an Office of Prayer in behalf of Missions
and Missionaries ; an Office for the Setting apart of a
Layman as a Reader, or as a Missionary ; a Form of
Prayer at the Laying of a Corner-stone ; and possibly
some others. It is evident that these new formularies
might give opportunity for the introduction of hitherto
unused collects, anthems, and benedictions of a sort that
would greatly enhance the general usefulness of the
Prayer Book.

* Originally only an explanatory rubric. See Procter, p. 397.

124 REVISION OF THE

This completes the survey of the field of " liturgical
enrichment." A full discussion of the allied topic,
"flexibility of use," would involve the examination in
detail of all the rubrics of the Prayer Book, and for this
there is no room. It is enough to say that unless the
rubrics, the hinges and joints of a service-book, are kept
well oiled, much creaking is a necessary result. There
are turning-points in our public worship where congrega
tions almost invariably betray an awkward embarrass
ment, simply because there is nothing to tell them
whether they are expected to stand or to sit or to kneel.
It is easy to sneer at such points as trifles and to make sport
of those who call attention to them ; but if it is worth
our while to have ritual worship at all it is also worth
our while to make the directions as to how people are to
behave adequate, explicit, plain. A lofty contempt for
detail is not the token of good administration either in
Church or State. To the list of defective rubrics add
those that are confessedly obsolete and such as are pal
pably contradictory and we have a bill of pai'ticulars
that would amply justify a rubrical revision of the
Prayer Book even if nothing more were to be attempted.

There is another reason. Far more rapidly than
many people imagine, we are drifting away from the
position of a Church that worships by liturgy to that of
a Church worshipping by directory. The multiplicity
of " uses " that vexed the Anglican Reformers is in our
day multiplied four-fold. To those who honestly con
sider a dii'ectory a better thing than a liturgy this
process of relaxation is most welcome, but for others
who hold that, until the binding clauses of a Book of
Common Prayer have been formally rescinded, they

AMERICAN COMMON PRAYER. 125

ought to be observed, the spectacle is the reverse of
edifying. They would much prefer seeing the channels
of liberty opened at the touch of law, and this is one of
their chief reasons for advocating revision.

Two questions remain untouched, both of them of
great practical importance. Could the Prayer Book be
enriched to the extent suggested in this paper without a
serious and most undesirable increase in its bulk as a
volume ?

Even supposing this were possible, is it at all likely
that the Church could be persuaded to accept the
amended book ?

Unless the first of these two eminently proper ques
tions can be met, there is, or ought to be, an end to all
talk about revision. The advantage to a Church of be
ing able to keep all its authoritative formularies of wor
ship within the compass of a single volume is inesti
mable. Even the present enforced severance of the
Hymnal from the Prayer Book is a misfortune.*

TRose were good days when " Bible and Prayer Book "
was the Churchman's all sufficient formula so far as vol
umes were concerned.

Rome boasts a much larger ritual variety than ours,
but she secures it by multiplying books. The Missal is
in one volume, the Breviary in four, the Pontifical, the
Ritual, and the Ceremonial in one each, making eight in
all.f This is an evil, and one from which we Anglicans
have had a happy escape. It was evidently with a

*Let us hope that before long there may be devised some
better way of providing relief for our Widows and Orphans than
that of the indirect taxation of the singers of hymns.

f The Greek Office Books, it is said, fill eighteen quartos.

126 REVISION OF THE

great groan of relief that the Church of England shook
herself free from the whole host of service-books, and
established her one only volume. It behooves us to be
watchful how we take a single step towards becoming
entangled in the old meshes.*

But need the enrichment of the Prayer Book — such
enrichment as has been described, necessarily involve
an unwieldiness in the volume, or, what would be still
worse, an overflow into a supplement ? Certainly not ;
for by judicious management every change advocated in
this paper, and more besides, might be accomplished
without transgressing by so much as a page or a para
graph the limits of the present standard book. All the
space needed could be secui'ed by the simple expedient
of omitting matter that has been found by actual ex
perience to be superfluous. Redundancy and un
necessary repetition are to the discredit of a book that
enjoys such an unrivalled reputation as the Common
Prayer. They are blemishes upon the face of its literary
perfectness. Who has not marvelled at the strange
duplication of the Litany and the Office of the Holy
Communion in the Ordinal, when the special petitions
proper to those services when used in that connection
might easily have been printed by themselves with a
direction that they be inserted in the appointed place ?

* In that naive and racy bit of English (omitted in our Amer
ican book) entitled Concerning the Service of the Church, one of the
very choicest morsels is the following : " Moreover, the number
and hardness of the Rules called the Pie, and the manifold
changings of the Service, was the cause, that to turn the Book
only was so hard and intricate a matter, that many times there
was more business to find out what should be read than to read it
when it was found out."

AMERICAN COMMON PRAYER. 127

Scholars, of course, know perfectly well how this came
about. The Ordinal does not belong to the Prayer Book
proper, but has a separate identity of its own. When
printed as a book by itself it is all very well that it
should include the Litany and the Holy Communion in
full, but why allow these superfluous pages to crowd out
others that are really needed ? *

It has already been explained how the room now oc
cupied by the " Selections " might be economized, and
by the same simple device the space engrossed by divers
psalms here and there in the Occasional Offices, e. g.,
Psalm li in the Visitation of Prisoners, and Psalm
cxxx in the Visitation of the Sick could be made avail
able for other use.

Again, why continue to devote a quarter of a page of
precious space to the " Prayer for imprisoned debtors,"
seeing that now, for 'a long time past, there has been no
such thing in the United States as imprisonment for
debt ? By availing ourselves of only a portion of these
possible methods of garnering space, all that is desired

* It may be wise to buttress the position taken with a quotation
out of Dr. Coit.

" We really, however, do not see any necessity for either of
these Services in American Books, as with us the Ordinal always,
now, makes a part of the Prayer Book in all editions. It would be
a saving to expunge them and no change would be necessary, ex
cept the introduction of such a litanical petition and suffrage with
the Services for Deacons and Priests, as already exists in the Ser
vice for Bishops. The Church of England retains the Litany in
her Ordinal, for that, until latterly, was printed in a separate
book, and was not to be had unless ordered expressly. And yet
with even such a practice she has but one Communion Service.
We study cheapness and expedition in our day. They can both
be consulted hero, anlva fide et sttha fcclezia.'' — Report of 1844.

128 REVISION OF THE

might be accomplished, without making the Prayer Book
bulkier by a single leaf than it is to-day.

But would a Prayer Book thus enriched be accepted
by the Church at large ? Is there any reason to think
that the inertia which inheres in all large bodies, and to
a singularly marked degree in our own Communion,
could be overcome ? The General Convention can give
an approximate answer to these questions ; it cannot
settle them decisively, for it is a body which mirrors
only to a certain extent the real mind and temper of the
constituencies represented in it. One thing is certain, that
only by allowing fullest possible play to the principle of
" local option " could any wholly new piece of work on the
part of revisionists, however excellent it might be in itself
considered, find acceptance. To allowf eatures introduced
into the body of an existing service to be accounted
optional, would indeed be impossible, without gendering
the very wildest confusion. Upon such points the
Church would have to decide outright, for or against,
and stand by her decisions. But as respects every ad
ditional and novel Office proposed, the greatest care
ought to be taken to have the indefinite An rather than
the definite The prefixed to it. Before such new uses
are made binding on all, they must have met and en
dured the test of thorough trial by some. This is
only fair.

But there is a limit, it must be remembered, in the
Church's case to the binding power of precedent and
prescription. The social order changes, and of these
tides that ebb and flow it is our bounden duty to take
note. Had mere aversion to change, dogged unwilling
ness to venture an experiment always carried the day,

AMERICAN COMMON PRAYER. 129

instead of having the " Prayer Book as it is," we should
still be drearily debating the rival merits of Hereford
and Sarum. The great question to be settled is, Does
an emergency exist serious enough to warrant an attempt
on our part to make better what we know already to be
good ? Is the Republic expecting of us, and reasonably
expecting of us, greater things than with our present
equipment we are quite able to accomplish ? There are
eyes that think they see a great future before this
Church — are they right, or is it only mirage ? At any
rate jours is no return trip — we are outward bound.
The ship is cutting new and untried waters with her keel
at every moment. There is no occasion to question the
sufficiency of either compass or helm, but in certain mat
ters of a practical sort there is a demand upon us to use
judgment, we are bound to give a place in our seaman
ship to present common-sense as well as to respect for
ancient usage, and along with it all to feel some confi
dence that if the ship is what we think her to be, " the
winds of God " may be trusted to bring her safely into
port.

THE BOOK ANNEXED : ITS CRITICS AND ITS
PROSPECTS.

THE BOOK ANNEXED : ITS CRITICS AND ITS
PROSPECTS.*

I.

FIRST, last, and always this is to be said with respect
to the revision of the American Common Prayer, that
unless we can accomplish it with hearty good feeling
the attempt at improvement ought to be abandoned
altogether.

The day has gone by when new fonnularies of wor
ship could be imposed on an unwilling Church by edict,
and although under our carefully guarded system of
ecclesiastical legislation there is little danger of either
haste or unfairness, we must bear it well in mind that
something more than " a constitutional majority of both
houses " is needful if we would see liturgical revision
crowned with real success. Of course, absolute unan
imity is not to be expected. Every improvement that
the world has seen was greeted at its birth by a chorus
of select voices sounding the familiar anthem, " The old
is better" ; and the generation of those, who, in the
sturdy phrase of King James's revisers, "give liking
unto nothing but what is framed by themselves, and
hammered on their anvil," will be always with us. But
substantial unanimity may exist, even when absolute
unanimity is impossible, and if anything like as gen-

* First printed in The Church Review, 1886.

133

134 THE BOOK ANNEXED !

eral a consent can be secured for revision in 1886 as
was given to it in 1883, the friends of the movement
will have good reason to be satisfied.

That there has been, since the publication of The
Book Annexed as Modi/led, a certain measure of re
action against the spirit of change must be evident to
all who watch carefully the pulse of public opinion in
the Church. Whether this reaction be as serious as
some imagine, whether it have good reasons to allege,
and whether it be not already giving tokens of spent
force, are points which in the present paper will be
touched only incidentally, for the winter's purpose is
rather irenic than polemical, and he is more concerned
to remove misapprehensions and allay fears than to seek
the fading leaf of a controversial victory.

LIMITATIONS.

No estimate of the merits and demerits of The Book
Annexed can be a just one that leaves out of account
the limitations under which the framers of it did their
work. These limitations were not unreasonable ones.
It was right and proper that they should be imposed.
There is no good ground for a belief that the time will
ever come when a "blank cheque," to borrow Mr.
Goschen's mercantile figure, will be given to any com
pany of liturgical revisers to fill out as they may see fit.
But the moulders of forms, in whatever department of
plastic art their specialty lies, when challenged to
show cause why their work is deficient in symmetry or
completeness, have an undoubted right to plead in reply
the character of the conditions under which they
labored. The present instance offers no exception to

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 135

the general rule. In the first place, a distinct pledge
was given in the House of Deputies, in 1880, before
consent to the appointment of the Joint Commit
tee was secured, that in case such permission to launch
a movement in favor of revision as was asked for were
to be granted, no attempt would be made seriously to
change the Liturgy proper, namely, the Office of the
Holy Communion.

The question was distinctly asked by a clerical
deputy from the diocese of Maryland,* Do you desire to
modify the Office of the Holy Communion ? and it was
as distinctly answered by the mover of the resolution
under which the Joint Committee was finally appointed,
No, we do not. It is true that such a pledge, made by
a single member of one House, could only measurably
control the action of a Joint Committee in which both
Houses were to be represented ; but it is equally plain
that the maker of the pledge was in honor bound to do
all in his power to secure the observance of its terms.

Let this historical fact be noted by those who are dis
posed to complain that the Joint Committee did not pull
to pieces and entirely rearrange the Anglo-Scoto-Amer-
ican Office, which now for a long time, and until quite
recently, we have been taught to esteem the nearest
possible approach to liturgical perfection.

Under this same head] of " limitations " must be set
down the following resolutions passed by the Joint
Committee itself, at its first regular meeting :

Resolved, That this Committee asserts, at the outset, its con
viction that no alteration should be made touching either state
ments or standards of doctrine in the Book of Common Prayer.

* The Rev. Dr. Orlando Button.

136 THE BOOK ANNEXED:

Resolved, That this Committee, in all its suggestions and acts,
be guided by those principles of liturgical construction and ritual
use which have guided the compilation and amendments of the
Book of Common Prayer, and have made it what it is.

It was manifestly impossible, under resolutions like
these, to depart very widely from established precedent,
or in any serious measure to disturb the foundations of
things.

The first of them shut out wholly the consideration of
such questions as the reinstatement of the Athanasian
Creed or the proposal to make optional the use of the
word " regenerate " in the'Baptismal Offices ; while the
other forbade the introduction of^such sentimental and
grotesque conceits as " An Office for the Blessing of
Candles," "An Office for the Benediction of a Life
boat," and " An Office for the Reconciliation of a
Lapsed Cleric." *

Still another very serious limitation, and one especially
unfriendly to that perfectness of contour which we
naturally look to see in a liturgical formulary, grew out
of the tender solicitude of the Committee for what may
be called the vested rights .^of [congregations. There
was a strong reluctance to the cutting away even of
what might seem to be dead wood, lest there should
ensue, or be thought to ensue, the loss of something
really valuable.

It was only as the result of much painstaking effort,
and only at some sacrifice of literary fastidiousness, that
the Committee was enabled to report a book of which
it could be said that, while it added much of possible
enrichment, it took away almost nothing that had been

*Prie8t's Prayer Book, Fifth edition, pp. 238, 243, 281.

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 137

in actual possession.* There could be no better illus
tration of this point than is afforded by certain of the
alterations proposed to be made in the Order for Even
ing Prayer.

The Committee felt assured that upon no point was
the judgment of the Church likely to be more unani
mous than in approving the restoration to their time-
honored home in the Evening Office of Magnificat and
Nunc dimittis, and yet so unwilling were they to dis
place Bonum est conftteri and Benedic anima mea from
positions they have only occupied since 1789 that they
authorized the unquestionably clumsy expedient of
printing three responds to each Lesson.

Probably a large majority of the Committee would
have preferred to drop Bonum est confiteri and Benedic
anima mea altogether, retaining Cantate Domino and
Deus misereatur as the sole alternates to the two Gospel
canticles, as in the English Book, but rather than have
a thousand voices cry out, as it was believed they would
cry out, " You have robbed us," the device of a second
alternate was adopted, to the sad defacement of the
printed page. In may be charged that, in thus choos
ing, the Committee betrayed timidity, and that a wise
boldness would have been the better course ; but if ac
count be taken of the attitude consistently maintained
by General Convention towards any proposition for
the change of so much as a comma in the Prayer Book,
during a period of fifty years prior to the introduc
tion of The Book Annexed, it will perhaps be
concluded that for the characterization of the Com-

* The Prayer for Imprisoned Debtors is believed to be the only
formulary actually dropped.

138 THE BOOK ANNEXED:

mittee's policy timidity is scarcely so proper a word
as caution.

SPECIAL CRITICISMS.

(a) Foreign.

As there is reason to believe that opinion at home has
been very considerably affected by foreign criticism of
The Book Annexed, it will be well at this point to give
some attention to what has been said in English journals
in review of the work thus far accomplished. The more
noteworthy of the foreign criticisms are those contained
in The Church Quarterly Revieic, The Church Times, and
The Guardian*

The Church Quarterly reviewer opens with an expres
sion of deep regret at " the failure to take advantage of
the opportunity for reinstating the Athanasian Creed."
As already observed, no such opportunity existed. By
formal vote the Joint Committee debarred itself from
any proceeding of this sort, and the Convention, which
sat in judgment on its work, was manifestly of opinion
that in so acting the Committee had rightly interpreted
its charter.

The reviewer, who is in full sympathy with the move
ment for enrichment as such, goes on to recommend, as
a more excellent way than that followed in The Book
Annexed, the compilation of

An Appendix to the Book of Common Prayer to contain the much
needed Additional Services for both Sunday and other use in
churches, in mission chapels, rand in religious communities, as

* The Church Quarterly Review for April, 1884, and July, 1884.
The Church Times for August 29, 1884 ; also July 31, August 7,
14, 21, 28, September 4, 1885. Tlie Guardian for Ju}y 20, 1885.

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 139

well as a full supply of Occasional Prayers and Thanksgivings for
objects and purposes, missionary and otherwise, which are as yet
entirely unrepresented in our Offices.

There are obvious reasons why this device should com
mend itself to an English Churchman, for it is unlikely
that anything better than this, or, indeed, anything
one half so satisfactory, could be secured by Act of
Parliament.

For something very much better than this, however,
a self-governed Church, like our own, has a right to
look, and, in all probability, will continue to look until
the thing is found. An Appendix to a manual of wor
ship, whether the manual be Prayer Book or Hymnal,*
is and cannot but be, from the very nature of things, a
blemish to the eye, an embarrassment to the hand, and
a vexation to the spirit. Such addenda carry on their
face the suggestion that they are makeshifts, postscripts,
after-thoughts ; and in their lack of dignity, as well as
of convenience, pronounce their own condemnation.

Moreover, in our particular case, no " Appendix,"
" Prymer," or " Authorized Vade-mecum " could accom
plish the ends that are most of all desired. Fancy put
ting the Magnificat, the Nunc dimittis, the Versicles
that follow the Creed, and the " Lighten our darkness"
into an " Appendix." It would be the defeat of our
main object.

Then, too, this is to be remembered, that in order to
secure a " fully authorized Appendix," we, in this country,
should be obliged to follow precisely the same legal
process we follow in altering the Prayer Book. If an
Occasional Office cannot pass the ordeal of the criticism
* Recall the " Additional Hymns" of 1868.

140 THE BOOK ANNEXED I

of two successive Conventions, it ought not to be set
forth at all ; if it can and does stand that test, then it
ought to be inserted in the Prayer Book in the particular
place where it most appropriately belongs and may most
readily be found.

Moreover, it should be remembered that one, and by
no means the least efficient, of the causes that brought
the Common Prayer into existence in the sixteenth
century was disgust at the multiplication of service-
books. We American Churchmen have two already ;
let us beware of adding a third.

The critic of The Quarterly was probably unacquainted
with the fact that in the American Episcopal Church the
experimental setting forth of Offices " for optional and
discretional use " is not possible under the terms of the
Constitution. We either must adopt outright and for
permanent use, or else peremptorily reject whatever is
urged upon us in the name of liturgical improvement.

Entering next upon a detailed criticism of the con
tents of The Book Annexed the writer proceeds to offer
a number of suggestions, some of them of great value.
He pleads earnestly and with real force for the restora
tion of the Lord's Prayer to its " place of honor " be
tween the Creed and the Preces, showing, in a passage
of singular beauty, how the whole daily office " may be
said to have grown out of, or radiated from, or been
crystallized round the central Pater noster" even as
" from the Words of Institution has grown the Christian
Liturgy."

The critic has only praise for the amendments in the
Office for Thanksgiving Day ; approves the selection of
Proper Sentences for the opening of Morning and Even-

ITS CRITICS AXD ITS PROSPECTS. 141

ing Prayer ; avers, certainly with truth, that the Office
of the Beatitudes might be improved ; welcomes " the
very full repertory of special prayers " ; thinks that the
Short Office of Prayer for Sundry Occasions " certainly
supplies a want " ; rejoices in the recognition of the
Feast of the Transfiguration ; and closes what is by far
the most considerable, and, both as respects praise and
blame, the most valuable of all the reviews that have
been made of The Book Annexed whether at home
or abroad, with these words :

On the whole, we very heartily congratulate our Transatlantic
brothers on the labors of their Joint Committee. We hope their
recommendations may be adopted, and more in the same direc
tion ; and that the two or three serious blemishes which we have
felt constrained to point out and to lament may be removed from
the book in the form finally adopted.

And further, we very earnestly trust that this work, which lias
been very evidently so carefully and conscientiously done, may
speedily, by way of example and precedent, bear fruit in a like
process of enrichment among ourselves.

Commending these last words to the consideration of
those who take alarm at the suggestion of touching the
Prayer Book lest we may hurt the susceptibilities of
our "kin beyond sea," and unduly anticipate that
"joint action of both Churches," which, at least until
disestablishment comes, must always remain a sheer im
possibility, w^e pass to a consideration of the six articles
contributed to the Church Times in July and August
last, under the title, The Revised American Prayer Book.
Here we come upon a writer who, if not always edify
ing, has the undoubted merit of being never dull. In
fact, so deliciously are logical inconsequence and ac
cidental humor mingled throughout his fifteen columns

142 THE BOOK ANNEXED :

of discursive criticism that a suspicion arises as to the
writer's nationality. It is doubtful whether anyone
born on the English side of the Irish Sea could possibly
have suggested the establishment of a Saint's Day in
honor of the late respected Warden of Racine College,
or seriously have proposed that Messrs. Oliver Wendell
Holmes, Russell Lowell, Henry James, and W. D.
Howells be appointed a jury of " literary arbitrament "
to sit in judgment on the liturgical language of The
J3ook Annexed / and this out of respect to our proper
national pride. Doubtless it would add perceptibly to
the amused sense of the unfitness of things with which
these eminent liberals must have seen themselves thus
named, if permission could be given to the jury, when
empanelled, to " co-opt " into its number Mr. Samuel
Clemens and Mr. Dudley Warner.*

The general tenor of the writer in The Church Times
may fairly be inferred from the following extract from
the first article of the series :

The judgment that must be pronounced on the work as a
whole is precisely that which has been passed on the Revised

* This proposal of arbitration has occasioned so much innocent
mirth that, in justice to the maker of it, attention should be called
to the ambiguity of the language in which it is couched. The
wording of the passage is vague. It is just possible that by " the
question ".which he would be content to submit to the judgment
of the four specified men of letters, he means, not, as he has been
understood to mean, the whole subject-matter of The Book An
nexed, but only the abstract question whether verbal variations
from the English original of the Common Prayer be or be not, on
grounds of purity of style, desirable. Even if this be all that he
means there is perhaps still room for a smile, but, at all events,
he ought to have the benefit of the doubt.

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 143

New Testament, that there are doubtless some few changes for
the better, so obvious and so demanded beforehand by all edu
cated opinion that to have neglected them would at once have
stamped the revisers as blockheads and dunces ; but that the set-
off in the way of petty and meddlesome changes for the worse,
neglect of really desirable improvements, bad English, failure in
the very matter of pure scholarship just where it was least to be
expected, and general departure from the terms of the Commis
sion assigned to them (notably by their introduction of confusion
instead of flexibility into the services, so that the congregation can
seldom know what is going to happen) has so entirely outweighed
the merits of the work that it cannot possibly be adopted by the
Church, and must be dismissed as a dismal fiasco, to be dealt
with anew in some more adequate fashion.

This paragraph is not reproduced for the purpose of
discrediting the writer of it as a judge of English prose,
for there are various passages in the course of the six
articles that would more readily lend themselves to such
a use. The object in quoting it is simply to put the
reader into possession, in a compact form, of the most
angry, even if not the most formidable, of the various
indictments yet brought against The JBook Annexed.

Moreover, the last words of the extract supply a good
text for certain didactic remarks that ought to be made,
with respect to what is possible and what is not possible
in the line of liturgical revision in America.

Worthless as the result of the Joint Committee's
labors has turned out to be, their motive, we are assured,
was a good one. The critic's contention is not that the
work they undertook is a work that ought not to be
done, but rather that when done it should be better
done. The revision as presented must be " dismissed as
a dismal fiasco," but only dismissed " in order to be
dealt with anew in some more adequate fashion." But

144 THE BOOK ANNEXED :

on what ground can we rest this sanguine expectation of
better things to come ? Whence is to originate and how
is to be appointed the commission of " experts " which
is to give us at last the " Ideal Liturgy " ?

Cardinal Newman in one of his lesser controversial
tracts remarks :

If the English people lodge power in the many, not in the few,
what wonder that its operation is roundabout, clumsy, slow, in
termittent, and disappointing ? You cannot eat your cake and
have it ; you cannot be at once a self-governing nation and have
a strong government.*

Similarly it may be said that, however great the diffi
culties that beset liturgical revision by legislative proc
ess at the hands of some five hundred men, neverthe
less the fact remains that the body known in law as
The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States
of America has provided in its Constitution that change
in its formularies shall be so effected and not otherwise.
It may turn out that we must give up in despair the
whole movement for a better adaptation of our manual
of worship to the needs of our land and of our time ; it
may be found that the obstacles in the way are absolutely
insuperable ; but let us dream no dreams of seeing this
thing handed over, " with power," to a " commission of
experts," for that is something which will never come to
pass.

Whether " experts " in liturgies are any more likely
to furnish us with good prayers than " experts " in pros
ody are likely to give us the best poetry is a tempting
question, but one that must be left, for the present, on
one side. Perhaps, if the inquiry were to be pushed, we

* Discussions and Arguments, p. 341.

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 145

might find ourselves shut up to the curious conclusion
that the f ramers of the very earliest liturgies, the authors
of the old sacraraentaries, were either verbally inspired
or else were lacking in the qualifications which alone
could fit them to do worthily the work they worthily
did, for clearly " experts " they were not.

But the question that immediately concerns us is one
of simple fact. Assuming the present laborious effort
at betterment to have been proved a "fiasco," how is the
General Convention to set in motion any more promising
enginery of revision ? " Summon in," say our English
advisers, "competent scholars, and give them carte
blanche to do what they will." But the Convention,
which is by law the final arbiter, has no power to invite
to a share in its councils men who have no constitutional
right to a seat upon its floor. How thankfully should
we welcome as participants in our debates and as allies
in our legislation the eminent liturgical scholars who
give lustre "to the clergy list of the Church of England ;
but we are as powerless to make them members of the
General Convention as we should be to force them into
the House of Commons. The same holds true at home.
If the several dioceses fail to discover their own " in
glorious Miltons," and will not send them up to General
Convention, General Convention may, and doubtless
does, lament the blindness of the constituencies, but it
cannot correct their blunder. The dioceses in which
the "experts " canonically reside had had full warning
that important liturgical interests were to be discussed
and acted upon in the General Convention of 1883 ; why
were the " experts " left at home ? And if they were
not returned in 1883, is there sufficient reason to believe

146 THE BOOK ANNEXED :

that they will ever be returned in any coming year of
grace ? It must be either that the American Church is
bereft of " experts," or else that the constituencies, in
fluenced possibly by the hard sense of the laity, have
learned hopelessly to confound the "expert" with the
doctrinaire.

Of " expert testimony," in the shape of the liturgical
material gathered, mainly by English writers, during
the last fifty years, the Joint Committee had no lack.
That this material was carefully sifted and conscien
tiously used, The Book Annexed will itself one day
be acknowledged to be the sufficient evidence.

There is still another point that must be taken into ac
count in this connection, to wit, the attitude which the
Episcopate has a right to take with respect to any pro
posed work of liturgical revision. Bishops have probably
become inured to the hard measure habitually dealt out to
them in the columns of the Church Times, and are un
likely to allow charges of ignorance and incompetency so
far to disturb their composure as to make them afraid to
prosecute a work which, from time immemorial, has been
held to lie peculiarly within their province. It may be
affirmed, with some confidence, that no revision of the
American Offices will ever be ratified, in the conduct of
which the Bishops of the Church have not been allowed
the leadership which belongs to them of right. Then
it is for the General Convention carefully to consider
whether any House of Bishops destined to be convened
in our time is likely to have on its roll the names of
any prelates more competent, whether on the score of
learning or of practical experience, to deal with a work
of liturgical revision than were the seven prelates

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 14*7

elected by the free voice of their brethren to repre
sent the Episcopal Order on the Joint Committee of
Twenty-one.

Coming to details the reviewer of the Church Times
regrets, first of all, the failure of the Convention to
change the name of the Church. He goes on to express
a disapproval, more or less qualified, of the discretionary
power given to bishops to set forth forms of prayer for
special occasions, and of the continued permission to
use Selections of Psalms instead of the psalms for the
day. It is not quite clear whether he approves the ex
pansion of the Table of Proper Psalms or not, though he
thinks it " abstractedly desirable " that provision be
made in this connection for " Corpus Christ! and All
Souls."

He condemns the latitude allowed in the choice of les
sons under the rules of the new lectionary, fearing that
a clergyman who happens to dislike any given chapter
because of its contents may be tempted habitually to
suppress it by substituting another, but in the very
next paragraph he gravely questions the expediency of
limiting congregations to such hymns as have been
" duly set forth and allowed by authority." Yet most
observers, at least on this side of the water, are of opin
ion that liberty of choice within the limits of the Bible
is a far safer freedom, so far as the breeding of heresy
goes, than liberty of choice beyond the limits of the
Hymnal has proved itself to be. The reviewer is
pleased with the addition of the Feast of the Transfigu
ration to the Calendar, but " desiderates more," and
would gladly welcome the introduction into the Prayer
Book of commemorations of eminent saints, from Igna-

148 THE BOOK ANNEXED :

tius down,* but of this, mention has already been made,
and it is unnecessary to revert to it.

There follows next a protest against the selection of
proper Sentences prefixed to Morning and Evening
Prayer.

The revisers seem to have a glimmering of what was the right
thing to do, . . . but they should have swept away the undevo-
tional and unliturgical plan of beginning with certain detached
texts, which has no fltness whatever, and has never even seemed
to answer any useful end.

This is stronger language than most of us are likely
to approve. A Church that directly takes issue with
Rome, as ours does, with respect to the true source of
authority in religion has an excellent reason for letting
the voice of Holy Scripture sound the key-note of her
daily worship, whether there be ancient precedent for
such a use or not. At the same time, the reviewer's
averment that "the only proper opening is the Invoca
tion of the Holy Trinity " is entitled to attention ; and
it is worth considering whether the latter portion of the
nineteenth verse of the twent}r-eighth chapter of St. Mat
thew's Gospel might not be advantageously added to the
list of opening Sentences, for optional use.

In speaking of the new alternate to the Declaration of
Absolution, the reviewer suggests most happily that it
would be well to revive the form of mutual confession
of priest and people found in the old service-books. f

* " The list might be brought down as late as the authorities
pleased to bring it, even to include, if they chose, such names
as John Keble, James De Koven, and Ferdinand Ewer." — The
Church Times for August 14, 1885.

f This form of absolution suggested as an alternate ;in The
Book Annexed is taken from the source mentioned.

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 149

This proposal would probably not be entertained in con
nection with the regular Orders for Morning and Evening
Prayer, but room for such a feature might perhaps be
found in some optional office.

After a grudging commendation of the steps taken in
The Book Annexed to restore the Gospel Canticles,
the reviewer next puts in a strong plea for a larger
allowance of versicles and responses after the Creed,
contending that this is " just one of the places where
enrichment, much beyond that of replacing the English
versicles and responses now missing, is feasible and
easy," to which the answer is that we, who love these
missing versicles, shall think ourselves fortunate if we
succeed in regaining only so much as we have lost.
Even this will be accomplished with difficulty. It is
most interesting, however, to notice that this stout
defender of all that is English acknowledges the coup
ling together of the vei'sicle, " Give peace in our time, O
Lord," and the response, " Because there is none other
that fighteth for us, but only thou, O God," to be " a
very infelicitous non-sequititr." For correcting this pal
pable incongruhy, the authors of The Book Annexed
have been sharply criticised here at home. What were
they that they should have presumed to disturb ancient
Anglican precedent in such a point ? If we could not
understand why the God of battles, as the God of
battles, should be implored to "give peace in our time,"
so much the worse for our intelligence. But here comes
the most acrid of all our critics, and shows how the col
location of sentences in the English Book has, from the
beginning, been due to a palpable blunder in condensing
an office of the Sarum Breviary. Of the American sub-

150 THE BOOK ANNEXED I

stitute for this " unhappy response " the best he can say,
however, is that it is "well intentioried."

Of the " Office of the Beatitudes " the reviewer de
clares that it " needs thorough recasting before it can
stand," and in this we agree with him, as will hereafter
appear, though Avholly unable to concur in his sweeping
condemnation, in this connection, of one of the most
beautiful of Canon Bright's liturgical compositions, the
Collect beginning, "O God, by whom the meek are
guided in judgment and light riseth up in darkness for
the godly." Of this exquisite piece of idiomatic English,
the reviewer allows himself to speak as being " a very
poor composition, defective in rhythm."

The criticism of the eucharistic portions of The Book
Annexed is mainly in the line of complaint that more
has not been added in the way of new collects and
proper prefaces, but upon this point it is unnecessary to
dwell, the reasons having been already given why the
Joint Committee and the Convention left the liturgy
proper almost untouched. Neither is there anything
that specially calls for notice or serious reply in what is
said about the Occasional Offices.

The Office for the Burial of Children is acknowledged
to be a needed addition, but as it stands " is pitched in
an entirely wrong key. The cognate offices in the
Rituale Romanun and the Priesfs Prayer Book
ought to have shown the Committee, were it not for
their peculiar unteachableness, a better way." To one
who can read between the lines, this arraignment of
the Americans for their lack of docility to the teachings
of the Priest's Prayer Book is not devoid of drollery.

It will happily illustrate the peculiar difficulties that

ITS CRITICS AXD ITS PROSPECTS. 151

beset liturgical revision to close this resume of the cen
sures of The Church Times by printing, side by side,
the reviewer's estimate of the changes proposed in the
Confirmation Office and the independent judgment of a
learned evangelical divine of our own Church upon the
same point.

The Confirmation Service, as one of the very poorest in the
Anglican rites, stood particularly in need of amendment and en
richment, especially by the removal of theambiguous word " con
firm" applied to the acts of the candidates, whereby the errone
ous opinion that they came merely to confirm and ratify their
baptismal promises, and not to be confirmed and strengthened in
virtue of something bestowed upon them, has gained currency.

Thus far the English Ritualist. Here follows the
American Evangelical :

I still hope you will see your way clear to modify the present
draft of the proposed Confirmation Office, as it gives a much
higher Sacramentarian idea of it than the present, a concession
which will greatly please the Sacerdotalists, to which they are by
no means entitled.

The critic of The Guardian is a writer of different
make, and entitled every way to the most respectful
attention. His fault-finding, which is invariably courte
ous, is mainly confined to the deficiencies of The Book
Annexed.

He would have had more done rather than less ; but
at the same time clearly points out that under the re
strictions which controlled the Committee more could
not fairly have been expected. He regrets that in re
storing the lost portions of Venite and Benedictus the
Convention did not make the use of the complete form
in every case obligatory ; and of the eight concluding

152 THE BOOK ANNEXED :

verses of the latter canticle, which under the rubric
of The Book Annexed are only obligatory during
Advent, he says, " Imagine their omission on Christmas
Day ! "

To this criticism there are several answers, any one of
which may be held to be sufficient. In the first place,
it should be remembered that into the Committee's
plan of enrichment there entered the element of differ
entiation. The closing portion of the Venite has a
special appropriateness to Lent ; the closing portion of
the Benedictus a special appropriateness to Advent.
Moreover, if any congregations desire the whole of these
two canticles throughout the year, there is nothing in
the rubrics of The Book Annexed to forbid such an
enjoyment of them. They may be sung in full always ;
but only in Lent in the one case, and in Advent in the
other, must they be so sung. The revision Committee
was informed, on what was considered the highest au
thority, that in the Church of England the Benedictus,
on account of its length, had been very generally dis
used. But, however this may be, there can be little
doubt that the effort after restoration would have
failed completely in the late Convention had the use of
these two canticles in full been insisted upon by the
promoters of revision.

There is less of verbal criticism in The Guardian's
review than could have been wished, for any sugges
tions with respect to inaccuracies of style or rhythmical
shortcomings would have been most welcome from the
pen of so competent a censor. Attention is called to
the unmusical flow of language in the alternate Confes
sion provided for the Evening Office ; the figurative

ITS CEITICS AXD ITS PROSPECTS. 153

features of the proposed Collect for Maundy -Thursday
are characterized as infelicitous ; and the Collect pro
vided for the Feast of the Transfiguration is declared
to be inferior to the corresponding one in the Sarum
Breviary.

Of this sort of criticism, at the hands of men who know
their craft, The Book Annexed cannot have too much.
In fact, of such immeasurable importance is good Eng
lish in this connection, that it would be no hardship
were every separate clause of whatever formulary it may
be proposed to engraft upon the Prayer Book to be
subjected to the most searching tests.

Let an epoch be agreed upon, if necessary, that shall
serve as the criterion of admissibility for words and
phrases. Let it be decided, for instance, that no word
that cannot prove an Elizabethan parentage, or, if this
be too severe a standard, then no word of post-Caroline
origin, shall be admitted within the sacred precincts.
Probably there are words in The Book Annexed which
such a canon would eject ; but let us have them pointed
out, and their merits and demerits discussed. Such
criticism would be of infinitely more value to the real
interests of revision than those vague and general
charges of " crudeness " and " want of finish " which it
is always so easy to make and sometimes so difficult to
illustrate.

The writer in 77*6 Guardian closes an only too brief
commentary upon what the Convention has laid before
the Church with the following words :

Many of the proposals now in question are excellent; but others
will be improved by reconsideration in the light of fuller ritual
study, such as will be seen to produce a more exact and cultured

154 THE BOOK ANNEXED

ritual aladyoif, perhaps we may, without offence, add, a more deli
cate appreciation of rhythm. What The Book Annexed pre
sents to us in the way of emendation is, on the whole, good ; but,
if subjected to a deliberate recension, it would, we predict, become
still better. If thus improved by the Convention of 1886, it
might be finally adopted by the Convention of 1889.

This conspectus of English critical opinion would be
incomplete were no account to be made of the utterances
of the various writers and speakers who dealt with the
general subject of liturgical revision at the recent Church
Congress at Portsmouth.

The Book Annexed could scarcely ask a more com
plete justification than is supplied by these testimonies of
men who at least maybe supposed to be acquainted with
the needs of the Church of England.

The following catena, made up from three of the four
papers * read upon the Prayer Book, gives a fair notion
of the general tone of the discussion. It will be worth
anyone's while to collate it with the thirty Resolutions
that make up the " Notification to the Dioceses."

Can it be seriously doubted that there are requirements of this
age which are not satisfied by the provision for public worship
made in the sixteenth century ? Can any really suppose that the
compilers of that brief manual, the Prayer Book, however proud
we may rightly be of their work, were so gifted with inspired
foresight as to save the Church of future ages the responsibilities
of considering and supplying the devotional wants of successive
generations?

Who has not felt the scantiness of holy association in our Sun
day and week-day worship ? . . . Much, I know, has been

* The paper read by the Dean of Worcester dealt exclusively
•with the legal aspects of the question as it concerns the Church of
England,

ITS CRITICS AXD ITS PROSPECTS. 155

supplied by our hymnology, which has progressed nobly In pro
portion as the meagreness of our liturgical provision has been
realized. But beyond hymns we need actual forms of service,
which shall strike the ear and touch the heart by fresh and vivid
adaptations of God's Word to the great mysteries of the Gospel
faith. . . . After-services on Sunday evenings Jiave of late
grown common ; for them we need also the aid of regular and
elastic forms.

Most deplorably have we felt the need of intercessory services
for Home and Foreign Missions ; and, though there are beautiful
metrical litanies which bear directly on these and other objects,
yet these are not sufficient, and of course are limited to times
when a good and strong choir can be secured ; . . . and further
we want very simple forms of prayer to accompany addresses
given in homes and mission rooms.*

I declare it as my conviction, after many years of (I hope) a
not indolent ministry, and of many opportunities of observation
and experiment, that the Church stands in pressing and imme
diate need of a few rearrangements and adaptations of some of
her Offices ; also of an enormous number of supplementary
Offices or services — some for frequent use, others for occasional
purposes within the consecrated buildings ; and that besides
these there is need of a supply of special Offices for the use of a
recognized lay agency outside of the church edifices.

Why limit our introductory sentences to seven deprecatory
texts ? . . . AVhy can we not introduce the anthem used on
Easter-day, instead of the Venite, throughout the Octave ; or at
least on Easter Monday and Tuesday ? Would not spiritual life
be deepened and intensified, and, best of all, be strengthened, by
the use in the same manner of a suitable anthem instead of the
Venite on Advent Sundays, on Christmas-day, at Epiphany, on
Ash- Wednesday, on Good Friday, during Rogation days, at
Ascension-tide, and on harvest festivals and the special annual
Church festival of the year ?

* The Rev. Edgar Morris Dumbleton (Rector of St. James's.
Exeter).

156 THE BOOK ANNEXED :

I submit that an enrichment of the Book of Common Prayer is
also required. For although, as already suggested, this may be
provided to some extent by a Collect for occasional use before the
final prayer of Morning Prayer or Evensong, the needs of the
Church will not be fully supplied witheut some complete addi
tional offices. Certainly an additional service for Sunday after
noon and evening. . . The times are very solemn, and we must
wait no longer. . . We have talked for nearly twenty-five
years — not vainly, I believe— but let us "go and do" not a little in
the next five years. . . Prove yourself to be of the Church of
God by doing all the work of the Church, and in the proper way.
Proclaim before our God by your actions and your activities, and
by providing all that is needed, not only for Churchmen, but for
earnest Christians who are not Churchmen, and for the poor,
weary sinners who are living as if there were neither Church nor
Saviour, such services for the one, and such means for drawing
the others to Christ, that they all may become one in him. And
for all this you must have (as I think) :

1. Possibly a small rearrangement of existing services,

2. Variety and additions in some of these services.

3. Enrichment by many services supplementary.

4. Services for use by laymen.

I wish to alarm none, but I wish we were all astir, for there is
no time to wait.*

I should like to suggest, if it seems desirable, as it does to me,
to make any further variation from the original arrangement of
Morning Prayer, that on such days as Easter-day, Whitsunday,
and Ascension-day we should begin in a little different fashion
than we do now.

Is it always needful to begin on such great days of rejoicing
for Christians with the same sentences and the same Exhortation
and Confession, and have to wait, so to speak, to give vent to our
feelings till we reach the special psalms for the day ? Might we
not on such days accept the glorious facts, and begin with some

*The Rev. George Venables (Hon. Canon of Norwich and,
Vicar of Great Yarmouth),

ITS CRITICS A>'D ITS PROSPECTS. 157

special and appropriate psalm or anthem ? . . . Thus we shotild
at once get the great doctrine of the day, and be let to rejoice in
it at the very outset, and then go on to the LORD'S Prayer and the
rest as we have it now. Confession of sin and absolution are not
left out in the services of the day, as, of course, they occur in the
Holy Communion ; but leaving them out in the ordinary services,
and beginning in the way suggested, would at one and the same
time mark the day more clearly, and give opportunity for Christian
gladness to show itself. . . Only one other alteration would, I
think, be needed, namely, that a good selection of psalms be
made, and used, as in the American Church, at the discretion of
the minister. I think all must feel that for one reason or another
all the psalms are not adapted for the ordinary worship of a
mixed congregation ; and this plan would ease the minds of many
clergy and laity. Also copying the American Church, it would
be well to omit the Litany on Christmas-day, Easter-day, and
Whitsunday.*

In the light of this summary of Anglican desiderata,
compiled by wholly friendly hands, it is plain that what
ever we may do in this country in the line of liturgical
revision, always supposing it to be gravely and carefully
done, instead of harming, ought marvellously to help
the real interests of the Church of England. Certain
principles of polity adopted in our own Church a century
ago, and notably among them those affecting the legis
lative rights of the laity in matters ecclesiastical, are
beginning to find tardy recognition in the England of
the present. Possibly a hundred years hence, or sooner,
a like change of mind may bring English Churchmen to
the approval of liturgical methods which, even if not
wholly consonant to the temper of the Act of Uniform
ity, have nevertheless been found useful and effective in
the work of bringing the truth and the power of God

'^_* The Rev. Arthur James Robinson (Rector of Whitechapel).

158 THE BOOK ANNEXED :

to bear upon the common life of a great nation. The
Church of England is to-day moving on toward changes
and chances of which she sees enough already to alarm
and not yet enough to reassure her. The dimness of
uncertainty covers what may yet turn out to be the
Mount of her Transfiguration, and she fears as she
enters into the cloud. How shall we best and most
wisely show our sympathy ? By passing resolutions of
condolence? By childish commiseration, the utterance
of feigned lips, upon the "approaching sorrows of dis
establishment ? Not thus at all, but rather by a cour
ageous and well-considered pioneering work, which shall
have it for its purpose to feel the ground and blaze the
path which presently she and we may find ourselves
treading in company. Tied as she is, for her an under
taking of this sort is impossible. We can show her no
greater kindness than by entering upon it of our own
motion and alone.

(b) American.

Criticism at home has been abundant ; much of it
intelligent and helpful, and by no means so much of it
as might have been expected captious. Of what may
be called official reviews there have been three, one from
the Diocese of Central New York, one from the Diocese
of Wisconsin, and one from the Diocese of Easton.
The subject has also been dealt with in carefully pre
pared essays published from time to time in The Church
-Review and The Church Eclectic, while in the case of
the weekly journals the treatment of the topic has been
so frequent and so full that a mere catalogue of the
editorial articles and contributed communications in

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 159

which, during the two years last past, liturgical revision
has been discussed would overtax the limits of the
present paper.

The only practicable means of dealing with this mass
of criticism is to adopt the inductive method, and to
seek to draw out from the utterances of these many
voices the four or five distinct concepts that severally
lie behind them.

Inlimine, however, let this be said, that the broadest
generalization of all is one to which the very discordance
of the critics bears the best possible witness. Of a
scheme of revision against which is pressed, in Virginia,*
the charge of Mariolatry ; in Ohio,f the charge of
Latitudinarianism ; and in Wisconsin, J the charge of
Puritanic pravity, this much may at least be said, that
it possesses the note of fairness. From henceforth
suggestions of partisan bias are clearly out of order.

The Anglo-Catholic censures of The Book Annexed
are substantially summed up in the assertion that due
regard is not had, in the changes proposed, to the
structural principles of liturgical science. In the exceed
ingly well written, if somewhat one-sided document,
already referred to as the Wisconsin Report, this is,
throughout, the burden of the complaint. The accom
plished author of the Report, than whom no one of the
critics at home or abroad has shown a keener or a better

*See letter of " J. L. W." in The Southern Churchman for
August 6, 1885.

f See letter of ' ' Ritualist " in The Standard of the Cross for July
2, 1885.

t See the " Report of the Committee of the Council of the Diocese
of Wisconsin, " passim .

160 THE BOOK ANNEXED !

cultivated liturgical instinct, is afraid that a free use of
all the liberties permitted by the new rubrics of the daily
offices would so revolutionize Morning and Evening
Prayer as practically to obliterate the line of their descent
from the old monastic forms. If there were valid ground
for such an expectation the alarm might be justifiable ;
but is there ? The practical effect of the rubrics that
make for abbreviation will be to give us back, on week
days almost exactly, and with measurable precision on
Sundays also, the Matins and Evensong of the First
Book of Edward VI. Surely this is not the destruction
of continuity with the pre-Reformation Church.

In his dislike of the provision for grafting the Beati
tudes upon the Evening Prayer, the author of the
Wisconsin Report will have many sympathizers, the
present writer among them ; but in his fear that in the
introduction of the Proem to the Song of the Three
Children, as a possible respond to the First Lesson,*
there lurks a covert design to dethrone the Te Deum,
he is likely to find few to agree with him.

But after all, may not this scrupulous regard for the
precedents set us in the old service-books be_carried too

* The evident intention of the Joint Committee in the introduc
tion of this Canticle was to make it possible to shorten the Morn
ing Prayer on week-days, without spoiling the structure of the
office, as is now often done, by leaving out one of the Lessons.
It is certainly open to question whether a better alternate might
not have been provided, but it is surprising to find so well fur
nished a scholar as the Wisconsin critic speaking of the Bene-
dictus es Domine as a liturgical novelty, " derived neither from
the Anglican or the more ancient service-hooks." As a matter of
fact the Benedictus es Domine was sung daily in the Ambrosian
Rite at Matins, and is found also in the Mozarabic Breviary.

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 161

far ? It is wholesome, but there is a limit to the whole-
someness of it. We remember who it was that made
war for the sake of " a scientific frontier." Some of
the scientific frontiers in the region of liturgies are
as illusory as his was. For example, The Book An
nexed may be " unscientific " in drawing as largely as it
does on the language of the Apocalypse for versicles
and responses. There has certainly been a departure
from Anglican precedent in this regard. And yet it
would scarcely seem that we could go far astray in bor
rowing from the liturgy of heaven, whether there be
earthly precedent or not.

Cranmer and his associates made a far bolder break
with the old office-books than The Book Annexed
makes with the Standard Common Prayer. The state
ment of the Wisconsin Report, that " The Reformers of
the English Church did not venture to write new
Offices of Prayer," must be taken^ with qualifications.
They did not make offices absolutely de novo, but they
did condense and combine old offices in a manner
that practically made a new thing of them. They took
the monastic services and courageously remoulded them
into a form suitable for the new era in which monas
teries were to exist no longer.

Happily they were so thorough in their work that
comparatively little change is called for in adapting
what they fitted to the needs of the sixteenth century
to the more varied requirements of the nineteenth.
Still, when they are quoted as conservatives, and we are
referred for evidence of their dislike of change to that
particular paragraph of the Preface to the English
Prayer Book entitled, Concerning the Service of the

162 THE BOOK ANNEXED :

Church* it is worth our while to follow up the reference
and see what is actually there said. The Wisconsin
Committee use very soft words in speaking of the
mediaeval perversions and corruptions of Divine Service.
" It was in the monasteries chiefly," they tell us, " that
these services received the embellishments and wonder
ful variety which we find in the later centuries." But
the following is the cruel manner in which, in the Eng
lish Preface cited as authority, the " embellishments "
and " wonderful variety " are characterized :

But these many years past, this godly and ancient order of
the ancient fathers hath been so altered, broken, and neglected,
by planting in uncertain stories and legends, -with multitudes of
responds, verses, vain repetitions, commemorations, and synodals,
that commonly when any book of the Bible was begun, after three
or four chapters were read out, all the rest were unread.

. . . And furthermore, notwithstanding that the ancient fathers
have divided the Psalms into seven portions, whereof every one was
called a Nocturn, now of late time a few of them have been daily
said and the rest utterly omitted. . . So that* here you have an
Order for Prayer and for the Reading of the Holy Scripture
much agreeable to the mind and purposes of the old fathers, and a
great deal more profitable and commodious than that which of
late was used.

This is conservatism in the very best sense, for the
object aimed at is plainly the conservation of purit}r,
simplicity, and truth, but surely it is not the conserv
atism of men with whom inaction is the only wisdom
and immobility the sole beatitude.

We change our sky completely in passing from Anglo-
Catholic to Broad Church criticism of The Book An
nexed. This last has, 'in the main, addressed itself to

* See Wisconsin Report, p. 5.

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 163

the rubrical features of the proposed revision. " You
promised us ' flexibility,' " the accusation runs, " but
what you are really giving us is simply rigidity under a
new form. Let things stay as they are, and we will un
dertake to find all the ' flexibility ' we care to have,
without help from legislation."

This criticism has at least the merit of intelligibility,
for it directly antagonizes what was, without doubt, one
main purpose with the revisers, namely, that of reviving
respect for the rubrics by making compliance with their
terms a more practicable thing.

Evidently what Broad Churchmen, or at least a sec
tion of them, would prefer is the prevalence of a general
consent under which it shall be taken for granted that
rubrics are not literally binding on the minister, but are
to be stretched and adapted, at the discretion of the
officiant, as the exigencies of times and seasons may
suggest. It is urged that such a common understanding
already in great measure exists ; and that to enact new
rubrics now, or to remodel old ones, would look like an
attempt to revivify a principle of compliance which we
have tacitly agreed to consider dead.

The answer to this argument is not far to seek. If
the Church means to allow the Common Prayer, which
hitherto has been regarded as a liturgy, to lapse into the
status of a directory ; if, in other words, she is content
to see her manual of worship altered from a book of in
structions as to how Divine Service shall be performed
into a book of suggestions as to how it may be rendered,
the change ought to be officially and definitely an
nounced, and not left to individual inference or uncer
tain conjecture. We are rapidly slipping into a position

164 THE BOOK ANNEXED :

scarcely consistent with either the dignity or the honor
of a great Church — that of seeming to be what we are
not. To give it out to the public that we are a law-
respecting communion, and then to whisper it about
among ourselves that our laws bind only those who
choose to be bound by them, may serve as a convenient
device for tiding over a present difficulty, but is, OH
the whole, a course of procedure more likely to harden
than to relieve tender consciences.

Take, by way of illustration, the case of a city clergy
man who would gladly introduce into his parish the
usage of daily service, but who is convinced, whether
rightly or wrongly, that to secure even a fair attendance
of worshippers he ought to have the liberty of so far
condensing the Morning or the Evening Office as to bring
it within the limits of a quarter of an hour. He seeks
relief through the lawful channel of rubrical revision,
and is only laughed at for his pains. In this busy nine
teenth century it is nonsense, he is assured, to spend a
dozen years in besieging so obdurate a fortress as the
General Convention. The way to secure "shortened
services " is to shorten services. This is easy logic, and
applicable in more directions than one. Only see how
smoothly it runs : If you want hymns that are not in
the Hymnal, print them. If you want a confessional-
box, set it up. If you want a " reserved sacrament,"
order the carpenter to make a tabernacle and the lock
smith to provide a bolt.* This is a far less troublesome
method of securing the ends desired than the tedious
and roundabout process of proposing a change at one

* See the precautions recommended in The Living Church
Annual for 1886, p. 132, art. " Tabernacle."

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 165

meeting of the General Convention, having your pro
posal knocked about among some forty or fifty dioceses,
and brought up for final action three years later.

And yet, superior as the former method may be to the
latter in point of celerity and directness, the latter has
certain advantages over the former that ought to be evi
dent to men who are not frightened by having their
scrupulousness called scrupulosity.

Moreover, why should this whole matter be discussed,
as so commonly it is discussed, wholly from the clerical
side ? Have the laity no rights in the liturgy which
the clergy are bound to respect? When and where did
the Protestant Episcopal Church confer on its ministers
a general dispensing power over the ordinances of wor
ship which it withheld from the body of the faithful ?

Heretofore it has been held that when a layman went
to church he had a right to expect certain things guar
anteed him by the Church's law. If all this has been
changed, then formal notice ought to be served upon us
by the General Convention that such is the fact.

THE MOTIVE OF THE EFFORT AFTER REVISION.

It is asked, and with no little show of plausibility,
Why — in the face of such manifold hostility and such
persistent opposition, why press the movement for re
vision any further? Is it worth while to divide public
sentiment in the Church upon a question that looks to
many to be scarcely more than a literary one ? Why
not drop the whole thing, and let it fall into the limbo,
where lie already the Proposed Book and the Memorial
Papers? For this reason, and it is sufficient : There
has arisen in America a movement toward Christian

166 THE BOOK ANNEXED :

unity, the like of which has not been seen since the
country was settled. It is the confident belief of many
that the key to the situation lies with that Church
which more truly than any other may be said to repre
sent the historical Christianity of the peoples of English
stock. One of the elements in this larger movement is
the question of the form of worship. The chief signifi
cance of The Book Annexed lies in the claim made for
it by its friends, that more adequately than the present
Standard it supplies what may fairly be demanded as
their manual of worship by a people circumstanced like
ours. While, in one sense, more English than the
present book in that it restores liturgical treasures lost
at the Revolution, it is also more thoroughly American,
in that it recognizes and allows for many needs which
the newly enfranchised colonists of 1789 could not have
been expected to foresee.

The question is, Shall we turn a cold shoulder on the
movement churchward of our non-Anglican brethren of
the reformed faith, doing our best to chill their ap
proaches with a hard JVon possumus, or shall we go out
to meet them with words of welcome on our lips ?
Union under " the Latin obedience " is impossible. For
us, in the face of the decrees of 1870, there can be " no
peace with Rome." The Greeks are a good way off.
Our true " solidarity," if " solidarity " is to be achieved
at all, is not with Celts, but with our own kith and kin,
the children of the Reformation. Is it wise of us to
say to these fellow Christians of ours, adherents of the
Catholic Faith as well as we, " Nay, but the nearer you
draw to us the farther we mean to draw away from
you ; the more closely you approximate to Anglican

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 167

religion, the more closely shall we, for the sake of
differencing ourselves from you, approximate to Vatican
religion ? "

In better harmony with the apostolic temper, in truer
continuity with the early churchmanship, should we be
found, were we to join voices thus :

V. Come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord.

R. And he will teach us of his ways, and we will
walk in his paths.

168 THE BOOK ANNEXED !

II.

THE Book Annexed may be said to hold to the possi
ble standard Common Prayer of 1890 a relation not un
like that of a clay model to the statue which is to be.
The material is still in condition to be moulded ; the
end is not yet. It was in anticipation of this state of
things that the friends of revision in 1883 were anxious
to carry through the preliminary stage of acceptance as
many of their propositions as possible. To revert to
our parable, the modeller, in treating the face of his
provisional image, must be careful to lay on clay enough,
or he may find himself barred at the last moment from
giving the features just that finishing touch which is to
make them ready for the marble. All the skill in the
world will not enable him to secure for the face pre
cisely the expression he would have it wear, if the
materia be insufficient. Looked at in this light, the
suggestion made by the Joint Committee in the House
of Deputies at an early stage of the session of 1883,
that the entire Book Annexed, in precisely the form in
which it had been submitted, should be passed, and
sent down to the dioceses for consideration, instead of
being the arbitrary and unreasonable demand it was
reckoned by those who lifted their eyebrows at the very
mention of such a thing, was really a sensible proposition
which the Convention would have done well to heed.

Few, if any, critics of The Book Annexed as Modi
fied have pronounced it an improvement to The Book

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 169

Annexed as presented. The Book came out of the Con
vention less admirable than it went in. As a school of
Liturgies, the long debate at Philadelphia was doubtless
salutary and helpful, but whether the immediate results, as
shown in the emendation of the Joint Committee's work,
were equally deserving of praise is another question.

Nevertheless, as was argued in the paper of which
this one is the continuation, we must take things as we
find them, not as we wish they were ; and since there is
no other method of liturgical revision known to our
laws than revision by popular debate, to revision by
popular debate we must reconcile ourselves as best we
may. Regrets are idle. Let us be thankful that the
amicable struggle at Philadelphia had for its outcome
so large rather than so small a mass of workable ma
terial, and instead of accounting The Book Annexed to
be what one of the signers of the Joint Committee's Re
port has lately called it, " a melancholy production,"
recognize in it the germ of something exceedingly to be
desired. From the first, there has never been any dis
position on the part of sober-minded friends of Revision
to carry through their scheme with a rush ; the delay
that is likely to better things they will welcome ; the
only delay they deprecate is the delay that kills.

The changes enumerated in the "Notification to the
Dioceses," and illustrated to the eye in The Book An
nexed as Modified, may be broadly classified under
the following heads :

(a) Clearly desirable alterations, with respect to
which there is practically unanimous consent, and for
which there is immediate demand, e. g.y shortened
offices of week-day prayer.

170 THE BOOK ANNEXED :

(£) Alterations desirable in the main, but likely to be
more cordially acquiesced in, could still further im
provement be secured, e. ff., the new versicles introduced
into Evening Prayer after the Creed.

(c) Alterations generally accounted undesirable on
any terms, e. ff., the permissive rubrics with respect to
the reading of certain psalms during Lent, instead of
the regular responds to the First and Second Lessons of
the Evening Prayer.

The question arises, Is any course of action possible
that will give us without delay the changes which for
some fifteen years the whole Church has been laboring
to secure ; that will give us, with a reasonable delay of
three years longer, the confessed improvements a little
more improved ; while at the same time we are kept
from becoming involved in the wretched confusion sure
to result from putting into circulation, within a brief
period, two authorized but diverse books of Common
Prayer? This threefold question it is proposed to meet
with a threefold affirmative.

THE STANDARD PKAYER BOOK OF 1890.

The end we ought to have in view is the publication,
in the year 1890, of a standard Book of Common Prayer,
such as shall embody the ripe results of what will then
have been a period of ten years of continuous labor in
the work of liturgical revision. To this reckoning of
ten yeai's should properly be added the seventeen years
that intervened between the presentation of " The
Memorial" in 1853 and the passing of the "Enrichment
Resolutions " in 1880 : so that really our Revision would

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 171

look back for its historical beginnings, not across a decade
merely, but over almost the lifetime of a generation. No
single one of the various revisions of the English Book
has observed anything like so leisurely a movement.

But by what methods of legislative procedure could
such a result as the one indicated be reached ? The prec
edent of the last century does not help us very much.
The American Book of Common Prayer was set forth
on the sixteenth day of October in the year of our Lord
1789; but with an express statutory provision that the
"use" of the book, as so set forth, should not become
obligatory till the first day of October, 1790. We cannot
copy this line of procedure, for the simple reason that
no such undertaking as that of 1789 is in hand. It is
not now proposed to legislate into existence a new
Liturgy. The task before us is the far humbler one of
passing judgment upon certain propositions of change,
almost every one of which admits of segregation, has an
independent identity of its own, and may be accepted
or rejected wholly without reference to what is likely to
happen to the other propositions that accompany it.

The, Book Annexed as Modified is in no proper
sense a Proposed Book, nor can it without misrep
resentation be called such ; it is simply a sample publi
cation * illustrative of what the Book of Common
Prayer would be, were all the Resolutions of Revision

* In this respect The Book Annexed may be compared lo
The Convocation Prayer Book published by Murray in 1880,
for the purpose of showing what the English Book would be like
if "amended in conformity with the recommendations of the Con
vocations of Canterbury and York, contained in reports presented
to her Majesty the Queen in the year 1879."

172 THE BOOK ANNEXED :

that passed their first stage of approval iu 1883 carried
into final effect ; a result most unlikely to occur.

THE MEANS TO THE END.

The most expeditious and every way satisfactory means
to the end that has now been defined would be the ap
pointment, at an early stage of the session in October,
of a Joint Committee of Conference. To this committee
should be referred :

(a) The question : How many of the Resolutions of
1883, or of the "several recommendations therein con
tained," is it either practicable or desirable to approve
at once ?

(b) The question : How may such of the Resolu
tions of 1883 as are too good to be lost, but not in their
present form good enough to satisfy the Church, be so
remoulded as to make their adoption probable in 1889 ?

(c) All new propositions of improvement that may
from time to time during the session be brought to the
notice of the Convention, either by individual members
or by memorials from Diocesan Conventions. Such a
Committee of Conference, holding daily sessions of
three or four hours each, would be able in due time to
report a carefully digested scheme which could then be
intelligently discussed. By this method a flood of
frivolous and aimless talk would be cut off without in
the slightest degree infringing or limiting the real
liberty of debate.

But even if the Convention were to show itself reluc
tant to give to a select committee so large a power as
this of preparing an agenda paper, it still would be possi
ble to refer to such a committee the subject-matter of so

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 173

many of the resolutions as might chance, when put upon
their passage, to fail by a narrow vote.

It is to be remembered that the various recommenda
tions contained in the resolutions of 1883 are to be voted
upon in ipsissimis verbis. There will be no opportunity
for the familiar cry : " Mr. President, I rise to propose an
amendment." The resolution, or the section of a resolu
tion, as the case may be, will either be approved just as
it stands or condemned just as it stands. In this respect
there will be an immense saving of time. Most of the
tediousness of debate grows out of the natural disposi
tion of legislators to try each his own hand at bettering
the thing proposed ; hence " amendments," "amendments
to amendments," and substitutes for the amendment to the
amendment. Even the makers of parliamentary law (much
enduring creatures) lose their patience at this point, and
peremptorily lay it down that confusion shall no further go.

But to return to the supposed case of a proposition
lost because of some slight defect, which, if only our
Medo-Persian law had permitted an amendment, could
easily have been remedied. Surely the sensible course
in such a case as that would be to refer the subject-matter
of the lost resolution to the Committee of Conference,
with instructions to report a new resolution to be finally
acted upon three years hence. So then, whether there
be given to the Committee of Conference either the
large power to recommend a carefully thought out way
of dealing with all the material en bloc, or the lesser
function of sitting in judgment on new propositions, and
of remoulding rejected ones, in either case there could
scarcely fail to result from the appointment of such a
committee large and substantial gains.

174 THE BOOK ANNEXED:

IMPROVEMENTS.

It follows, from what has been said, that if there are
features that admit of improvement in the proposals
which the Convention has laid before the Church for
scrutiny, now is emphatically the time for suggesting
the better thing that might be done. Even the bitter
est opponents of The Book Annexed can scarcely be so
sanguine as to imagine that nothing at all is coming
from this labored movement for revision. A measure
which was so far forth acceptable to the accredited
representatives of the Church, in council assembled, as
to pass its first stage three years ago almost by acclama
tion, is not destined to experience total collapse. The
law of probabilities forbids the supposition. The per
sonal make-up of the next General Convention will be
to a great extent identical with that of the last, and of
the one before the last. Sober-minded men familiar
with the work of legislation are not accustomed to reverse
their own well considered decisions without weighty
cause. The strong probability is that something in the
line of emendation, precisely how much or how little
no one can say, will, as a matter of fact, be done. In
view of this likelihood, would not those who are dissat
isfied with The Book Annexed as it stands be taking
the wiser course were they to substitute co-operative for
vituperative criticism ? So far as the present writer is
in any sense authorized to speak for the friends of
revision, he can assure the dissidents that such co-opera
tion would be most welcome.

A. B., a scholar thoroughly familiar, we will suppose,

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 175

with the sources of liturgical material, is dissatisfied with
the collects proposed for the successive days of Holy
Week. Very well, he has a perfect right to his dissatis
faction and to the expression of it in the strongest terms at
his command. He does only his plain duty in seeking to
exclude from the Prayer Book anything that seems to him
unworthy of a place in it. But seeing that he must
needs, as a " liturgical expert," acknowledge that the
deficiency which the Joint Committee sought to make
good is a real and not a merely fancied deficiency, would
not A. B. approve himself a more judicious counsellor if,
instead of bending all his energy to the disparagement
of the collects proposed, he should devote a portion of it
to the discovery and suggestion of prayers more happily
worded ?

And this remark holds good with reference to what
ever new feature is to be found between the covers of
The Book Annexed. If betterment be possible, these
six months now lying before us afford the time of all
times in which to show how, with the least of loss and
most of gain, it may be brought about.

The Diocese of Maryland is first in the field with
an adequate contribution of this sort. A thoroughly
competent committee, appointed in October, 1884, has
recently printed its Report, and whether the Diocesan
Convention adopt, amend, or reject what is presented to
it, there can be little doubt that the mind of the Church
at large will be perceptibly affected by what these repre
sentative men of Maryland have said.* Apart from a
certain aroma of omniscience pervading it (with which,
by the way, sundry infelicities of language in the text
* The Report was adopted.

1 76 THE BOOK ANNEXED !

of the Report, only indifferently consort), the document
is a forcible one, and of great practical value.

The Committee have gone over the entire field
covered by the " Notification to the Dioceses," taking up
the Resolutions one by one, and not only noting in con
nection with each whatever is in itself objectionable, but
also (a far more difficult task) suggesting in what respect
this or that proposition might be better put. The appa
ratus criticus th«s provided, while not infallible, is emi
nently helpful, sets a wholesome pattern, and if supple
mented by others of like tenor and scope, will go far to
lighten the labor of whatever committee may have
the final recension of the whole work 'put into its
hands.*

It would be a poor self-conceit in the framers of The
Book Annexed, that should prompt them to resent as
intrusive any criticism whatsoever. What we all have
at heart is the bringing of our manual of worship as
nearly as possible to such a pitch of perfectness as the
nature of things human will allow. The thing we seek
is a Liturgy which shall draw to itself everything that
is best and most devout within our national borders, a
Common Prayer suited to the common wants of all
Americans. Whatever truly makes for this end, it will
be our wisdom to welcome, whether those who bring it
forward are popularly labelled as belonging to this,
that, or the other school of Churchmanship. To allow
party jealousies to mar the symmetry and fulness of a
work in which all Churchmen ought to have an equal
inheritance would be the worst of blunders. By all

* In addition to the Maryland Report we have now a still more
admirable one from Central New York.

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 177

means let the raiment of needlework and the clothing of
wrought gold be what they should be for such sacred
uses as hers who is the daughter of the great King, but
let us not fall to wrangling about the vats in which the
thread was dyed or the river bed from which the gold
was gathered.

In a later paper the present writer intends to venture
upon a task similar to that undertaken by the Maryland
Committee. He will do this largely in the hope of en
couraging by example other and more competent
critics to busy themselves in the same way. Mean
while a few observations may not be amiss with re
spect to the sources of liturgical material, and the
methods by which they can be drawn upon to the best
advantage.

There has been, first and last, a deal of ill considered
talk about the boundlessness of the liturgical treasures
lying unused in the pre-Reformation formularies of the
English Church, as well as in the old sacramentaries and
office-books of the East and the West. Wonder is ex
pressed that with such limitless wealth at its command,
an " Enrichment Committee " should have brought in so
poverty-stricken a Report. Have we not Muratori
and Mabillon ? it is asked : Daniel and Assemani, Re-
naudot and Goar ? Are there not Missals Roman,
Ambrosian, and Mozarabic ? Breviaries Anglican,
Gallican, and Quignonian ? Has Maskell delved and
Neale translated and Littledale compiled in vain ? To
all of which there are two replies, namely : first, It is
inexpedient to overload a Prayer Book, even if the
material be of the best ; and secondly, This best material
is by no means so abundant as the volume of our re-

178 THE BOOK ANNEXED :

sources would seem to suggest. It was for the very
purpose of escaping redundancy and getting rid of
surplusage that the Anglican Reformers condensed
Missal, Breviary, and Rituale into the one small and
handy volume known as the First Prayer Book of
Edward VI. It was a bold stroke, doubtless denounced
as perilously radical at the time ; but experience has
justified Cranmer and his friends. In the whole history
of liturgies there is no record of a wiser step. It is
scarcely possible so grievously to sin against a people's
Prayer Book as by making it more complicated in ar
rangement and more bulky in volume than need actu
ally requires. It was ground of justifiable pride with
the "Enrichment Committee" that the Book which
they brought in, despite the many additions it coiu
tained, was no thicker by a single page than the Prayer
Book as it is. To be sure, the General Convention
spoiled all this by insisting on retaining certain dupli
cated formularies which the Committee had very prop
erly dropped in order to find room for fresh material.
But of the Book as first presented, it was possible to
say that in no degree was it more cumbrous than that
to which the people were already accustomed. Doubt
less it would have been stilt more to the Committee's
credit could they have brought in an enriched Book
smaller by a third than the Book in use ; but this their
conservatism forbade.

Of even greater moment is the other point, which
concerns the quality of the available material. It is the
greatest mistake in the world to suppose that simply be
cause a given prayer exists, say in an Oriental liturgy,
and has been translated into English by an eminent

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 179

scholar, it is therefore proper material to be worked into
our services. As a matter of fact, a great deal of devo
tional language of which the Oriental liturgies is made
up is prolix and tedious to a degree simply insufferable.
Moreover in the case of prayers in themselves admirable
in the original tongue in which they were composed, all
is often lost through lack of a verbal felicity in the
translation. If anyone questions this judgment, let
him toil through Neale's and Littledale's Translations
of the Primitive Liturgies and see whether he can find
six, nay, three, consecutive lines which he would be
willing to see introduced into our own Communion
Office. Or, as respects translations from the Latin office-
books of the Church of England, let him scrupulously
search the pages of the " Sarum Hours," as done into the
vernacular by the Recorder of Salisbury, and see how
many of the Collects strike him as good enough to be
transplanted into the Book of Common Prayer. The
result of this latter voyage of discovery will be an in
creased wonder at the affluence of the mediaeval devo
tions, combined with amazement at the poverty and
unsatisfactoriness of the existing translations. It is with
a Latin collect as with a Greek ode or an Italian sonnet :
no matter how wonderful the diction, the charm of it is
as a locked secret until the thing has been Englished by
genius akin to his who first made it out of his own
heart. Of others besides the many brave men who
lived before Agamemnon might it be written :

sed omnes illacrumabiles
Urgentur, ignotique larga
Nocte, carent quia vate sacro.

It was the peculiar felicity of Schiller that he had Cole-

180 THE BOOK ANNEXED !

ridge for a translator, and the shades of Gregory and
Leo owe it to a living Anglican divine that we English-
speaking Christians can think their thoughts after them,
and pray their prayers.

Such being the facts in the case, it is evident that the
range of choice open to American revisers is far nar
rower than half-informed persons imagine it to be.

The very best sources of liturgical material are the
following :

(a) King James's Bible, including the Apocrypha, and
supplemented by the Prayer Book version of the Psalms ;

(b) The old Sacramentaries, Leonine, Gregorian,
and Gelasian, chiefly as illustrated by the genius of
Dr. Bright ;

(c) The Breviary in its various forms ;

(d) The Primers and other \\kefragmenta of the era
of the English Reformation ; *

(e) The devotional writings of the great Anglican
divines of the school of Andrews, Ken, and Taylor ; f
and last and least,

(/) The various manuals of prayer, of which the past
twenty years have shown themselves so prolific.J

* Strangely enough the Elizabethan period, so rich in genius of
every other type, seems to have been almost wholly barren of
liturgical power. Men had not ceased to write prayers, as a stout
volume in the Parker Society's Library abundantly evidences ; but
they had ceased to write them with the terseness and melody that
give to the style of the great Churchmen of the earlier reigns so
singular a charm.

fine liturgical manuscripts of Sanderson and Wren, made
public only recently by the late Bishop of Chester, ought to be
included under this head.

$ Many of these "Treasuries," "Golden Gates," and the like, have

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 181

Of the Anglican writers, Jeremy Taylor would be by
far the most helpful, were it not for the efflorescence of
his style. As it is, the best use that can be made of his
exuberant devotions is to cull from them here and there
a telling phrase or a musical cadence. The " General
Intercession," for example, on page 50 of The Book
Annexed, is a cento to which Taylor is the chief con
tributor.

That the Enrichment Committee made the best pos
sible use of the various quarries to which they had
access is unlikely. Even if they credited themselves
with having done so, it would be immodest of them to
say it. Better material than any that their researches
brought to light may still be lying near the surface,
somewhere close at hand, waiting to be unearthed.
Certainly this paper will not have been written in vain
if it serves the purpose of provoking to the good work
of discovery some of those who on the score both of
quality and of quantity account what has been thus far
done in the line of revision inadequate and meagre.

here and there something good, but for the most part they are
disfigured by sins against that " sober standard of feeling," than
•which, as a high authority assures us, nothing except " a sound
rule of faith" is more important " in matters of practical religion."
Of all of them, Scudamore's unpretentious little" Manual " is, per
haps, the best.

182 THE BOOK ANNEXED

III.

IT is next proposed to take up the Philadelphia Reso
lutions of Revision (1883) one by one, and to consider
in what measure, if in any, the subject-matter of each
of them lies open to improvement.

Should the method of procedure recommended in the
previous paper, or any method resembling it, find favor
at the approaching Convention, and a Conference Com
mittee of the two Houses be appointed to remould the
work with reference to final action three years hence,
criticism of this sort, even though inadequate, can
scarcely fail of being in some measure helpful.

RESOLUTION I.

The Title-page.

The proposals under this head are two in number : (a)
that the words, " together with the Psalter or Psalms of
David," be dropped from the title-page as superfluous,
and (b) that a general title, " THE BOOK or COMMON
PRAYER," be printed on the first page of the leaf pre
ceding the title-page.

Neither of these suggestions is of any great impor
tance, and the interest attaching to them is mainly
bibliographical. "Whenever any addition has been
made to the Prayer Book of the Church of England, the
rule has been to note it invariably in the Table of Con
tents, and sometimes also on the title-page.

Until 1662 the Psalter formed no part of the Prayer

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 183

Book ; it was a volume by itself, and was cited as such.
In fact, it was a sort of " Hymnal Companion to the
Book of Common Prayer." In the revision of 1662 the
Psalter was incorporated, and immediately there ap
peared upon the title-page of the Common Prayer, in
addition to what had been there before, the words, " to
gether with the Psalter or Psalms of David printed as
they are to be sung or read in the churches." The
present title-page of the English Book has a singularly
crowded and awkward look, contrasting most unfavor
ably in this regard with those of 1559, 1552, and 1549.*
But if the needless mention of the Psalter on our
present title-page gives pleasure to any considera
ble number of people, it would be foolish to press the
suggestion of a change. Let it pass.

Of a more sei'ious character would be the omission,
which some urge, of the words " Protestant Episcopal "
ffom the title-page. Should an}~thing of this sort be done,
which is most unlikely, Dr. Egar's suggestion to drop the
words, " of the Protestant Episcopal Church," leaving it
to read, " according to the use in the United States of
America," would carry the better note of catholicity.

But, after all, the remonstrants have only to turn the
page to find the obnoxious " Protestant Episcopal" so
fast riveted into the Ratification that nothing short of
an act of violence done to history could accomplish the
excision of it. f

* For a conspectus of the various title-pages, see Keeling's
LitufjicR Britannicm, London, 1842.

f The question of a change in the name of the Church is a con
stitutional, and in no sense a liturgical question. Let it be con
sidered at the proper time, and in a proper way, but why thrust
it precipitately into a discussion to which it is thoroughly foreign ?

184 THE BOOK ANNEXED :

RESOLUTION II.

The Introductory Portion.

(a) Table of Contents.* — The suggestion * that all en
tries after " The Psalter " should be printed in italics, is
a good one.

(b) Concerning the Service of the Church. — This sub
stitute for the present " Order how the Psalter is ap
pointed to be read " and " Order how the rest of the Holy
Scripture is appointed to be read " is largely based on
the provisions of the so-called " Shortened Services Act"
of 1872. The second paragraph relating to the use of
the Litany appears to be superfluous.

The enlarged Table of Proper Psalms and the Table
of Selections of Psalms, which come under this same
general heading, would be a very great gain. Why
the Maryland Committee should have pronounced the
latter Table " practically useless, since the psalms are
not to be printed," it is hard, in the face of the existing
usage with respect to " Proper Psalms," to understand ;
nor is there any special felicity in the proposal emanat
ing from the same source that the number of the
Selections be cut down to three, one for feasts and
one for fasts and one for an extra service on Sunday
nights.

On the other hand, the Maryland Committee does
well in recommending that permission be given to the
minister to shorten the Lessons at his discretion, though
the hard and fast condition, " provided he read not less
than fifteen consecutive verses," apart from the ques-

* By the Maryland Committee.

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 185

tionable English in which it is phrased, smacks more of
the drill-room than of the sanctuary. Far better would it
be (if the suggestion may be ventured) to allow no liberty
of abridgment whatever in the case of Proper Lessons,
while giving entire freedom of choice on all occasions
for which no proper lessons have been appointed. So
far as " ferial " days are concerned, it would be much
wiser to let the Table of Lessons be regarded as sug
gestive and not mandatory. The half-way recognition
of this principle in the new Lectionary, in which such a
freedom is allowed, provided the Lesson taken be one
of those appointed for " some day in the same week,"
seems open to a suspicion of childishness.

The rubrical direction entitled " Hymns and An
thems" requires verbal correction, but embodies a
wholesome principle.

Under this same general head of " The Introductory
Portion " come the new Lectionary and the new Tables
for finding Easter. Of these, the former is law already,
except so far as respects the Lessons appointed for the
proposed Feast of the Transfiguration. The Easter
Tables are a monument to the erudition and accuracy of
the late Dr. Francis Harison. The Tables in our present
Standard run to the year 1899. Perhaps a "wholesome
conservatism " ought to discover a tincture of impiety
in any proposal to disturb them before the century has
expired.

RESOLUTION HI.

The Morning Prayer.

(a) The First Rubric. — The Maryland Committee is
quite right in remarking that the language of this im-

186 THE BOOK ANNEXED I

portant rubric, as set forth by the Convention of 1883,
is " inelegant and inaccurate," but another diocese has
called attention to the fact that the substitute which
Maryland offers would, if adopted, enable any rector
who might be so minded to withhold entirely from the
non-communicating portion of his flock all opportunity
for public confession and absolution from year's end to
year's end. It is not for a moment to be supposed that
there was any covert intention here, but the incident
illustrates the value to rubric-makers of the Horatian
warning — Brevis esse laboro, obscurusfio.

Passing by the Proper Sentences for special Days and
Seasons, against which no serious complaint has been
entered,* we come to the proposed short alternative for
the Declaration of Absolution. As it stood in the
Sarum Use this Absolution ran as follows :

" The Almighty and Merciful Lord grant you Absolu
tion and Remission of all your sins, space for true peni
tence, amendment of life, and the grace and consolation
of the Holy Spirit. Amen." f

With the single change of the word " penitence " to

*This paragraph was written before the author had been privi
leged to read Prof. Gold's interesting paper in The Seminarian.
It is only proper to say that this accomplished writer and very
competent critic does object emphatically to the theory that the
opening Sentences are designed to give the key-note of the Service.
But here he differs with Blunt, as elsewhere in the same paper he
dissents from Freeman and from Littledale, admirably illustrating
by his proper assertion of an independent judgment, the difficulty
of applying the Vicentian rule in liturgical criticism. Such vari
ations of opinion do, indeed, make against " science," but they
favor good sense.

f Chambers's Translation.

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 187

" repentance " this is the form in which the Absolution
stood in the original Book Annexed. The Convention
thought that it detected a " Romanizing germ " in the
place assigned to " penitence," and an archaism in the
temporal sense assigned to " space," and accordingly re
arranged the whole sentence. But in their effort to mend
the language, our legislators assuredly marred the music.*

(e) The Benedictus es, Domine. — The insertion of
this Canticle as an alternate to the Te Deum was in the
interest of shortened services for week-day use, as has
been already explained. The same purpose could be
served equally well, and the always objectionable ex
pedient of a second alternate avoided, by spacing off
the last six verses of the Benedicite, which have an
integrity of their own, and prefixing a rubric similar to
those that stand before the Venite and the Benedictus
in " The Book Annexed " ; e. g. :

^[ On week-days, it shall suffice if only the latter por
tion of this Canticle be said or sung.

(n) The Benedictus. — With reference to the restora
tion of the last portion of this Ifymn, it has been
very properly remarked by one of the critics of TJie
Book Annexed, that the line of division between the
required and the optional portions would more properly
come after the eighth than after the fourth verse. This

* This is not to be understood as an acknowledgment that the doc
trinal and philological objections to the formulary as it originally
stood were sound and sufficient. On the lips of a Church which
declares " repentance " to be an act whereby we "forsake sin,"
a prayer for time does not seem wholly inappropriate, while as
for this use of the word "space " of which complaint was made,
it should be noticed that King James's Bible gives us nineteen
precedents for it ; and the Prayer Book itself one.

188 THE BOOK ANNEXED :

would make the portion reserved for Advent begin with
the reference to John the Baptist, as undoubtedly it
ought to do : "And thou, child, shalt be called the
Prophet of the Highest."

(o) De Profundis. — There will probably be general
consent to the omission of this alternate, as being what
the Maryland Committee naively call it, " too mournful
a psalm " for this purpose.*

RESOLUTION IV.

Daily Evening Prayer.

(c) The proposed words, " Let us humbly confess our
sins unto Almighty God," are justly thought by many to
be inferior both in rhythm and in dignity to "Let us make
humble confession to Almighty God."

(i)-(l) There seems to be absolute unanimity in the
judgment that Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis ought,
as Gospel Hymns, to have the prior places after the
Lessons which they follow. In the interest of sim-

* In The Book Annexed, as originally presented, there stood
in this place the beautiful and appropriate psalm, Lemvi oculos.
But the experts declared that this would never do, since from
time immemorial Lecati oculos had been a Vesper Psalm, and it
would be little less than sacrilege to insert it in a morning service,
however congruous to such a use the wording of it might, to an un
scientific mind, appear. Accordingly the excision was made ; but
upon inquiry it turned out that the monks had possessed a larger
measure of good sense, as wrell as a better exegesis, than the Con
vention had attributed to them, for Lemvi oculos, it appears, be
sides being a Vesper psalm, stood assigned, in the Sarum Breviary,
to Prime as well ; the fact being that the psalm is alike adapted to
morning and to evening use, and singularly appropriate both to the
"going out " and the " coming in " of the daily life of man.

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 189

plicity of arrangement a like general consent to omit
altogether Bonurn est confiteri and Benedic anima mea
would be most fortunate, but this point has been already
enlarged upon in a previous paper.*

The " •[ Notes," permitting the use of Psalms xlii.
and xliii. after the Lessons during Lent, seem to have
found no favor in any quarter, and ought undoubtedly
to be dropped.

(n) If the lost versicles are to be restored after the
Creed, as all who have learned to love them in the service
of the Church of England must earnestly desire, some
better substitute for " God save the queen," than " O
Lord, save our rulers," ought surely to be found. f
Moreover, the order of the versicles, as Prof. Gold has
clearly pointed out,J is open to improvement.

RESOLUTION v.
The Beatitudes of the Gospel.

This is the one feature of The Book Annexed against
which the fire of hostile criticism has been the most
persistently directed. Whether the strictures passed
upon the Office have been in all cases as intelligent as

* See p. 6.

f " O Lord, bow thine ear," has been suggested as a substitute.
It is in the words of Holy Scripture, it is the precise metrical
equivalent of "O Lord, save the queen, "and it is directly an-
tiphonal to the versicle which follows.

There being no Established 'Church in the United States, it is
doubtful whether any prayers for " rulers "are desirable, over and
above those we already have. And if this point be conceded, the
other considerations mentioned may be allowed to have weight in
favor of " O Lord, bow thine ear."

\ The Seminarian, 1886, pp. 29, 30.

190 THE BOOK ANNEXED :

they have been severe, may be open to question, but
there can be no doubt whatever that, in its present form,
RESOLUTION V. would, if put to the vote, be rejected.

Passing by the more violent utterances of those whose
language almost suggests that they find something ob
jectionable in the very BEATITUDES themselves,* it will
suffice to consider and weigh what has been said in
various quarters, first, about the unprecedented character
of the Office, and secondly, concerning the infelicity of
the appointed response, " Lord, have mercy upon us, and
be it unto thy servants according to thy word."

So far as concerns precedent, it ought to be enough
to say that the words are our Lord's words, and that
they were thrown by him into a form which readily
lends itself to antiphonal use. The very same character
istics of parallelism and antithesis, that make the Psalms
so amenable to the purposes of worship, are conspicuous
in the BEATITUDES. If the Church of England, for

* It may be well to throw into a foot-note a single illustration
of what might otherwise be thought an extravagant statement.
The Rev. W. C. Bishop, writing in The Church Eclectic for Febru
ary, 1884, says :

" The service of the Beatitudes proposed by the Committee is
just one of ' fancy-liturgy making,' which ought to be summarily
rejected. We have more than enough of this sort of thing already ;
the commandments, comfortable words, et hoc genus omne, are
anything but ' unique glories ' of our Liturgy. Anything of
which we have exclusive possession is nearly certain to be a
' unique blunder,' instead of anything better, because the chances
are a thousand to one that anything really beautiful or edifying
would have been discovered by, and have commended itself to,
some other Christians in the last two thousand years." If such is
to be the nomenclature of our new " science," Devotion may well
stand aghast in the face of Liturgies.

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 191

three hundred years, has been willing to give place in
her devotions to the Curses of the Old Testament,* we
of America need not to be afraid, precedent or no prec
edent, to make room among our formularies for the
Blessings of the New.

Those who allow themselves to characterize the
liturgical use of these memorable sayings of the Son of
Man as "fancy ritual " and "sentimentalism " may well
pause to ask themselves what manner of spirit they are
of. The BEATITUDES are the charter of the kingdom
of heaven. If they are " sentimental," the kingdom is
"sentimental"; but if, on the other hand, they con
stitute the organic law of the People of God, they have
at least as fair a right as the Ten Commandments to be
published from the altar, and answered by the great
congregation.

But is the complaint of "no precedent " a valid one,
even supposing considerations of intrinsic fitness to have
been ruled out ?

The Liturgy of St. Chrysostom provides that the
Beatitudes shall be sung on Sundays in room of the
third antiphon.f

The learned Bishop of Haiti, in a paper warmly com
mending the liturgical use of the BEATITUDES,;]; calls
attention to the further fact that the Eight Sayings

* See the Commination Office in the Prayer Book of the Church
of England.

f Daniel's Codex Liturgicus, vol. iv. p. 343. Quoted in
Dictionary of Christian Antiquities. The translation of ftampiaftol
lias been doubted ; but Dr. Neale and Prof. Cheetham agree
that the reference is to the BEATITUDES of the Gospel.

J Church Eclectic for April, 1884.

192 THE BOOK ANNEXED :

have a place in some of the service-books of the Eastern
Church in the Office for the Sixth and Ninth Hours, and
notes the suggestive and touching circumstances that,
as there used, they have for a response the words of the
penitent thief upon the cross. We might all of us well
pray to be "remembered" in that kingdom to which
these Blessings give the law.

In The Primer set forth by the King's Majesty and
his Clergy in 1545, a sort of stepping-stone to the
later "Book of Common Prayer," we find the BEATI
TUDES very ingeniously worked into the Office of The
Hours, as anthems ; beginning with Prime and ending
with Evensong. Appropriate Collects are interwoven,
some of them so beautiful as to be well worth pre
serving.*

But the most interesting precedent of all remains still
to be studied. In the first year of the reign of William
and Mary, a Royal Commission was appointed to revise
the Book of Common Prayer. The most eminent Angli-

* The following will serve as an illustration :

The Anthem:

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall get mercy ; blessed are
the clean in the heart, for they shall see God.

The Versicle :
Lord hear my prayer.

The Answer :
And let my cry come to thee-

Let its pray.

Lord Jesu Christ, whose property is to be merciful, which art
alway pure and clean without spot of sin ; Grant us the grace to
follow thee in mercifulness toward our neighbors, and always to
bear a pure heart and a clean conscience toward thee, that we may
after this life see thee in thy everlasting glory, which livest and
reignest God, world without end. Amen.

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 193

can divines of tlie day, including Tillotson, Stillingfleet,
Patrick, and Beveridge, were among the members. To
all outward appearance the movement came to naught ;
for the proposed revision was not even put into print,
until in 1854, the House of Commons, in response to a
motion of Mr. Heywood, ordered it to be published as a
Blue-book. And yet in some way our American revisers
of 1789 must have found access to the original volume
as it lay hidden in the archbishop's library at Lambeth ;
for not only does their work show probable evidence of
such consultation, but in their Preface they distinctly
refer to the effort of King "William's Commission as a
"great and good work,"* a thing they would scarcely
have done had they possessed no real knowledge of the
facts. Macaulay's sneering reference to the work of the
Commission is well known, but, strangely enough, the
justice which a Whig reviewer withholds, a high Angli
can divine concedes, for no less exacting a critic than
Dr. Neale, while manifesting, as was to be expected, a
general dislike of the Commissioners of 1689, and of
their work, does yet find something to praise in what
they recommended.f

Among the real improvements suggested by the Com
mission was the liturgical use of the BEATITUDES, and
this in two places, once in "The Order for the Adminis
tration of the Lord's Supper," as an alternate to the
Ten Commandments ; and again in the Commination

* It is interesting and suggestive to observe with how much less
frequency our attention is called to this paragraph of the Preface
than to the later one which asserts historical continuity with the
Church of England.

f Essays on Lituryiology , p. 228.

194 THE BOOK ANNEXED i

Office as a proper balance to the Anathemas of the
Law.

But the Commission, like the late Joint Committee on
the Book of Common Prayer, was unfortunate in its
choice of a response ; and no wonder, for the task of
finding the proper one is difficult.*

A Beatitude differs from a Commandment in that
while the latter enjoins the former only declares. The
one therefore simply calls for assent, or, at most, assent
coupled with petition, while the other peremptorily de
mands a cry for mercy. The immemorial form of the
cry for mercy in the devotions of Christendom is the
" Kyrie eleison," Lord, have mercy upon us y the imme
morial form of assent the word Amen. Can we do
better, therefore, in adapting the BEATITUDES to liturgi
cal use than to treat them precisely as the Curses are
treated in the Commination Office of the Church of Eng
land, namely, by inserting after each one of them a plain
A men f

This recommendation has the great merit of simplicity.
Two or three strikingly ingenious schemes for supplying
each of the Eight Sayings with a proper response of its
own have been suggested ; f but the objection to them
is that, beautiful though they are, their complexity
would embarrass and distress the kneeling worshipper.
In these matters, practical drawbacks have to be taken
into account as well as abstract excellencies, and no

* The response proposed by the Commissioners ran, " Lord have
mercy upon us, and make us partakers of this blessing," a prayer
unobjectionable for substance, but painfully pedestrian in style.

f Notably one in which the responses are all taken from
Psalm li.

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 195

matter how felicitous the antiphonal responses, they
would be worse than useless were a puzzled congrega
tion to refuse to join in them.

There will be found appended to this Paper a plan
for recasting the Office of the BEATITUDES in such
a way as to make it coincide structurally, as far as it
goes, with the introductory portion of the Holy Com
munion.* Were the Office to be thus set forth, it would
be possible on week-days, and with singular appropriate
ness on Saints' Days, to substitute the BEATITUDES for
the COMMANDMENTS, without encumbering the Commu
nion Office with an alternate. Should this suggestion
find acceptance, the two Collects in the present Office of
BEATITUDES, which are far too good to be lost, one of
them being the modified form of a Leonine original,
and the other one of the very best of Canon Bright's
own compositions, might be transferred to a place among
the " Occasional Prayers."

RESOLUTION VI.

TJie Litany.

The rubrics prefixed to the Litany are a gain, but ex
cept by the addition of the two new suffrages, the one
for the President and the other for the increase of the
ministry, it will probably be best to leave the text of
this formulary untouched. Even in the case of the new
petitions it would be well if they could be grafted upon
suffrages already existing, a thing that might easily be
done.f

* See Note at the end of this Paper.

^ E.g.: " That it may please thee to send forth laborers into thy
harvest, and to have mercy upon all men."

196 THE BOOK ANNEXED :

It would be a liturgical improvement if the Litany, in
its shortened form, were to end at the Christe, audi,
and the minister directed to return, at this point, to the
General Thanksgiving in the Morning Prayer. This
would divide the Litany symmetrically, instead of arbi
trarily, as is now done, and would remove the General
Thanksgiving from a place to which it has little claim
either by historical precedent or natural congruity.

The greatest improvement of all would be the restora
tion of the august and massive words of invocation
which of old stood at the beginning of the Litany. The
modern invocations have a dignity of their own, but
they are not to be compared for devotional power and
simple majesty with the more ancient ones. But for an
" enrichment " so good as this, it is too much to hope.

RESOLUTION VII.

Prayers and Thanksgivings.

The Maryland Committee * have much to say in criti
cism of this section, and offer many valuable suggestions,
the best of them being a recommendation to print the
Prayer entitled, "For Grace to speak the Truth in
Love," in Canon Bright's own words. Some of their
comments, on the other hand, suggest canons of criti
cism which, if applied to " The Prayer Book as it is,"
would make havoc of its choicest treasures.f

* See Report, pp. 6-9.

f "Strike it out," said the literalist of a certain committee on
hymnody, many years ago, as he and his colleagues were sitting
in judgment on Watts's noble hymn, " There is a land of pure

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 19*7

The Committee of Central New York* go much
further in the line of destructive criticism than their
brethren of Maryland, and after excepting four of the
proposed prayers, condemn all the rest to dismissal.

Possibly this is just judgment, but those who have
searched diligently the storehouses of devotional Eng
lish, will think twice before they consent to it. No
doubt the phraseology of some of the proposed prayers
might be improved. In view of the searching criticism
to which for three years it has been exposed, it would
be strange indeed if such were not found to be the case.
But the collection as a whole, instead of suffering loss,
ought to receive increment. At least three or four more
prayers for the work of missions in its various aspects
ought to be added, also a Prayer for the furtherance of
Christian Education in Schools and Colleges. As Dr.
Dowden shrewdly asks, in speaking of spiritual needs
which we postpone expressing for lack of language

delight." "Either strike out the whole hymn or alter that word,
'living.'

" 'Bright fields, beyond the swelling flood,
Stand dressed in living green.'

What sense is there in ' living' green ? It is the grass that lives,
not the green." Happily the suggestion failed to find a seconder.
But revisers, whose work is to be passed upon by ballot, may well
be shy of idiomatic English. Take such a phrase as, " Now for
the comfortless trouble's sake of the needy"; Lindley Murray,
were he consulted, would have no mercy on it: and yet a more
beautiful and touching combination of words is not to be found
anywhere in the Psalter. It is the utter lack of this idiomatic
characteristic that makes "Lambeth prayers" proverbially so
insipid.
*See Report, p. 12.

198 THE BOOK ANNEXED :

sufficiently artistic in form, "What is the measure of
our faith in the efficacy of united prayer, when we are
content to go on, year after year, and never come
together to ask God to supply those needs? " *

There is one consideration connected with this supply
of special prayers too frequently lost out of sight.
While it is perfectly true that the Book of Common
Prayer was never designed to be a Treasury of Devotion
for individuals, it is equally true that for thousands and
hundreds of thousands of our fellow-countrymen who
live remote from " Church book-stores," or lack the
means of patronizing them, the Prayer Book is, as a
matter of fact, their only devotional help. In countless
households, moreover, many of them beyond "Prot
estant Episcopal " borders altogether, the Prayer Book
is doing a work only less beneficent than it might do,
were we to concede a very little more to that outwardly
illogical but spiritually self-consistent policy which,
breaking away, a century ago, from the chain of prec
edent, inserted in the American Book " The Forms of
Prayer to be used in Families."

RESOLUTION VIII.

Penitential Office for Ash- Wednesday.

This is the English Commination Office, with the
introductory portion omitted. It would add to the
merit of the formulary, especially when used as a
separate office, were it to be prefaced by the versicle
and response, similarly employed in the Hereford
Breviary :

* Quoted in The Church Eclectic for August, 1886.

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 199

V. Let us confess unto the Lord, for he is gracious.

J2. And his mercy endureth forever.

In view of the great length of the Morning Service
on Ash-Wednesday, and the close similarity between
the closing portion of the Litany and the intermediate
portion of this Office, the following emendation of the
first Rubric is suggested, a change which would carry
with it the omission of the Rubric after psalm li. a little
further on.

T On the First Day of Lent, at Morning Prayer, the
Office ensuing shall be read immediately after the words,
Have mercy upon us, in the .Litany, and in place, of
what there followeth.

In the third Rubric it might be well to add to " shall
be said " the words, " or sung."

The blessing at the end of the office should stand, as
in the English Book, in the precatory form ; otherwise
we might have the anomaly of a benediction pro
nounced before the end of the service.

RESOLUTION IX.

Thanksgiving-day or Harvest-home.

The only alteration needed in this office is the restora
tion of the beautiful prayer for unity to its own proper
wording as given in the so-called " Accession Service "
appended to the English Prayer Book. As it stands in
The Book Annexed the language of the prayer is
possibly ungrammatical and certainly redundant. A
critic, already more than once quoted,* protests against
the prominence given to this office in The Book An-

* Prof. Gold in The Seminarian, p. 34.

200 THE BOOK ANNEXED :

nexed, ascribing it to influences born of the associa
tions of New England. But although the motive of
the revisers might have had a worse origin than that of
which the reviewer complains, the actual fact is that
the formulary was placed where it is purely in considera
tion of the liturgical fitness of things ; it having been
held that the proper position for an Office of Thanks
giving must be in immediate sequence to an Office of
Penitence.

It is with sincere diffidence that the present writer
differs with The Seminarian, on a point of historical
precedent, but he ventures to suggest that to find the
prototype of Harvest-home we must go back far beyond
New England, and for that matter far beyond Old Eng
land, nay, beyond the Christian era itself, even to the
day when it was said, "Thou shalt observe the Feast of
Tabernacles, seven days, after that thou hast gathered
in thy corn and thy wine." Doubtless there is a joy
greater than the " joy of harvest," and to this we give
expression in the Eucharist ; but doubtless also the joy of
harvest is in itself a proper joy and one which finds
fitting utterance in such forms of prayer and praise as
this.

RESOLUTION XI.

Collects, Epistles, and Gospels.

No department of liturgical revision calls for a nicer
touch than that which includes the Collects. That new
collects for certain unsupplied feasts and fasts would be
a genuine enrichment of The Book of Common Prayer,

O v '

has long been generally acknowledged among Anglican

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 201

scholars. The most weighty fault to be found with the
collects added by the revisers is that in too large pro
portion they are addressed to the second and third
Persons of the Holy Trinity. The Eucharist itself, as
a whole, is properly conceived of as addressed to the
Eternal Father. The Collects, as forming part of the
Eucharistic Office, ought, strictly speaking, to be also
so addressed. It is true that there are exceptions to
this rule, and they are found, some of them, in the
Prayer Book as it is. But the revisers ought not to
have altered the proportion so markedly as they have
done, for whereas in our present Book the collects ad
dressed to the Father are as eighty-three to three com
pared with those not so addressed, the ratio in The
Book Annexed is that of eleven to three.

Moreover, there would seem to be no good reason for
reverting to the usage of the First Book of Edward
VI., which provides a second Collect, Epistle, and Gos
pel for the two great feasts of Christmas and Easter.
A better way would be to take these additional collects,
which are among the most beautiful in the language,
and assign them respectively to the Sunday after
Christmas, and the Monday in Easter-week.

RESOLUTION XII.

The Holy Communion

To the few changes proposed in this Office, compara
tively slight exception has been taken in any quarter.
It will probably be wise to leave the language of the
Prayer of Consecration wholly untouched, notwithstand
ing the alleged grammatical error near the end of it.

202 THE BOOK ANNEXED :

The Rubric which it has been proposed to append to
the Office, touching the number of communicants with
out which it shall not be lawful to administer the
Sacrament, being of a disciplinary rather than of a
liturgical character, ought not to be urged. The pro
posal to transfer the Prayer of Humble Access to a
place immediately before the Communion appears to be
very generally acceptable.

It would relieve many worshippers who scruple as
Christians at responding to the Fourth Commandment
on the score of its Judaic character, if the language of
the rubric prefixed to the Decalogue could contain, as
did the corresponding rubric in Laud's Book for
Scotland, a clause indicative of the mystical and spirit
ual sense in which th e Law should be interpreted by
those who live under the Gospel. But such a proposal
would probably be accounted " of doctrine," and so be
self-condemned.

Of the desirability of allowing a week-day use of the
BEATITUDES in the room of the COMMANDMENTS enough
has been already said.

RESOLUTION XVI.

Confirmation.

The permission to use a form of presentation instead
of, or in addition to, the Preface is likely to be widely
welcomed. The other addenda to this office, being ap
parently distasteful (for unlike reasons) to all the
" schools of thoughts " in the Church, are likely to
fail of acceptance ; and on the whole may easily be
spared.

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 203

RESOLUTION XVIII.

Visitation of the Sick.

The proposed Commendatory Prayer, though in some
of its features strikingly felicitous, is open to formal
improvement. The addition of a short Litany of the
Dying would be appreciated by those whose ministry is
largely exercised among the sick.

RESOLUTION XX.

Burial of the Dead.

By far the most important section of this Resolution
is the one providing for the insertion of special features
when the office is used at the burial of children. The
provision, or at least the suggestion, of a more appro
priate Lesson would be wise, but for the rest, the office
is almost all that could be wished.

A recent critic * raises the question, " Why single out
infants alone for a special service ? Why not forms for
rich men and poor men — old men and maidens — widows
and orphans ? " And yet our Lord Jesus Christ did
single out little children in a very striking and wonder
ful manner, and drew a distinction between them and
us which may well justify our treating their obsequies
with a peculiar tenderness. Even Rome, Mater dura
infantum as she has been sometimes thought, is studious
to consult in this point the natural affections of the
bereaved, and appoints a funeral mass distinct from that
appointed for the dead in general.

Bishop Seabury felt the need of a rite of this sort and
prepared one, but whether it was ever in actual use

* The Rev. Dr. Robert in The Churchman for July 17, 1886.

204 THE BOOK ANNEXED :

among the clergy of Connecticut the writer is not in
formed. Many, very many, since Seabury's day, have
felt the same need, and it is safe to say that no one feature
of T/te Book Annexed has enjoyed so universal a wel
come as this rightful concession to the demands of the
parental heart.

CONCLUSION.

The survey of corrigenda is no\v complete. The list
looks like a long one, but really the points noted are
few compared with those which have passed unchal
lenged. Here and there in the Resolutions that have
not been considered are words or phrases that admit of
improvement, and which in an actual and authorized
re-review by a Committee of Conference would undoubt
edly be improved.

The bulk of the work has, for a period of three years,
stood the incessant fire of a not always friendly criticism
far better than could have been anticipated by those
who in the first instance gave it shape. The difficul
ties of the task have been immense. That they have
not all of them been successfully overcome is clear
enough, but that they were faced with an honest pur-
.pose to be just and fair, and that this purpose was clung
to persistently throughout, is a credit which Churchmen
of the next generation will not withhold from those who
sought to be of service to them.

It remains to be seen whether the representatives of
the Church will take up this work and perfect it ; or
per contra in response to the demand for a " Com
mission of Experts," or the specious but utterly

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 205

impracticable * proposal of concerted action with the
Church of England, will decide to postpone the whole
affair to the Greek Kalends. One thing is certain, to
wit, that the death of this movement will mean inaction
for at least a quarter of a century. The men do not
live who will have the courage to embark on a fresh
enterprise of the like purport while the shipwreck of
this one is before their eyes. There are many who, out
of a conscientious fear of disturbing what they like to
think of as permanently settled, would view such a con
clusion of the whole matter with profound gratitude to
God. But there are many more to whom such a con
fession of the Church's inability to appreciate and unwil
lingness to meet the spiritual needs of a civilization won
derfully unlike anything that has preceded it would be
most disheartening. Least of all is there valid ground
for hope in the case of those who fancy that if they can
only annihilate this project, the day will speedily come
when they can revise the Prayer Book in a manner per
fectly conformable to their own conception of the
" Ideal Liturgy," and after a fashion which the most
ardent Anglo-Catholic must fain approve.

The American Book of Common Prayer bears the
impress to-day of two controlling minds, the mind of
Seabury and the mind of White. Doubtless it stood
Avritten in the councils of the Divine Providence that so
it should be. The two men represented respectively
the two modes of apprehending spiritual truth which

* Specious, because our continuity with the Church life of Eng
land is inestimably precious ; impracticable, because there is no
representative body of the English Church authorized to treat
with us.

206 THE BOOK ANNEXED :

have always been allowed counterplay and interaction
in the history of English religion, and which always
will be allowed such counterplay and interaction while
English religion remains the comprehensive thing it is.
No scheme of liturgical revision, no matter how scien
tifically constructed, will ever find acceptance with the
people of this Church Avhich does not do even-handed
justice to both of the great historic growths which find
their common root in Anglican soil.

When the spirit of Seabury shall have completely ex
orcised the spirit of White, or the spirit of White shall
have completely exorcised the spirit of Seabury from
the Church and from the Prayer Book, logic will have
triumphed, as sixteen years ago it triumphed under the
dome of St. Peter's — logical consistency will have tri
umphed, but catholicity will have fled.

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 207

NOTE.

THE BEATITUDES OF THE GOSPEL.

^f On Christmas-da}-, Easter-day, and Whitsunday,
and on any week-day save Asli-AVednesday and Good
Friday, this Office may be used in lieu of so much of
The Order for the Administration of the Lord's Supper
as precedeth the Epistle for the Day.

^f This Office may also be used separately on occasions
for which no proper Order hath been provided.

If The Minister standing up shall say the Lord^s
Prayer and the Collect following, the People kneeling,
but the Lord's Prayer may be omitted if it hath been
said immediately before.

OUR Father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy
Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done
on earth, As it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily
bread. And forgive us our trespasses, As we forgive
those who trespass against us. And lead us not into
temptation ; But deliver us from evil. Amen.

The Collect.

A LMIGHTY God, unto whom all hearts are open,
-^X all desires known, and from whom no secrets are
hid ; Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspira
tion of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love
thee, and worthily magnify thy holy Name ; through
Christ our Lord. Amen.

208 THE BOOK ANNEXED :

1" Then shall the Minister, turning to the People, re
hearse the Eight Sayings of our Lord commonly called
THE BEATITUDES ; and the People, still kneeling, shall
after every one of them reverently say Amen.

Minister.

Jesus went up into a mountain ; and his disciples
came unto him. And he opened his mouth and taught
them, saying : Blessed are the poor in spirit ; for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven.

Answer. Amen.

Minister. Blessed are they that mourn ; for they
shall be comforted.

Answer. Amen.

Minister. Blessed are the meek ; for they shall
inherit the earth.

Answer. Amen.

Minister. Blessed are they which do hunger and
thirst after righteousness ; for they shall be filled.

Answer. Amen.

Minister. Blessed are the pure in heart ; for they
shall see God.

Answer. Amen.

Minister. Blessed are the peace-makers ; for they
shall be called the children of God.

Answer. Amen.

Minister. Blessed are they which are persecuted for
righteousness' sake ; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Answer. Amen.

Minister.

Hear also what the voice from heaven saith. Blessed
are the dead who die in the Lord.

ITS CRITICS AND ITS PROSPECTS. 209

Answer.

Even so, saith the Spirit, for they rest from their
labors.

Minister.

Let us pray.

Almighty and Eternal God, to whom is never any
prayer made without hope of mercy ; Bow thine ear,
Ave beseech thee, to our supplications, and in the country
of peace and rest cause us to be made partners with
thy holy servants ; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.*

^[ Tlien shall be said the Collect for the Day and,
unless the Holy Communion is immediately to follow,
such other prayer or prayers, taken out of this Book, as
the Minister shall think proper.

* This Prayer lias been gathered from the Diriye in The
Primer set forth by the King's Majesty and his Clergy, 1545; the
same source (it is interesting to note) to which we trace the
English form of the Collect for Purity at the beginning of the
office.

APPENDIX :

SERJfOXS BEFOKE AXD AFTER.

APPENDIX.

PERMANENT AND VARIABLE CHARACTERISTICS OF
THE PRAYER BOOK.

A SERMON PREACHED IX ST. STEPHEN'S CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA,

ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE BISHOP WHITE PRAYER

BOOK SOCIETY, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1878.

One generation passeth away ; and another generation cometh.— Eccles. i. 4.

AGAINST the background of this sombre fact of change, what
ever there is in life that is stable stands out with a sharpness that
compels notice. Just because the world is so full of variableness,
our hearts' affections fasten with the tighter grip upon anything
that seems to have the guarantees of permanence. The Book of
Common Prayer appeals to us on this score, precisely as the
Bible, in its larger measure, does : it Is the book of many genera
tions, not of one, and there is "the hiding of its power." We
have received the Prayer Book from the generations that are
gone; we purpose handing it on when "another generation
cometh"; we hold it for the use and blessing of the generation
which now is.

Our thoughts about the book, therefore, if we would have the
thinking rightly done, must take hold upon the past, the present,
and the future, a breadth of topic covered well enough perhaps by

213

214 APPENDIX.

this phrase, The Permanent and the Variable Characteristics of
the Prayer Book.

I make no apology for asking you to take up the subject in so
grave a temper. Now, for more than three hundred years, the
Common Prayer has been the manual of worship in use with the
greater number of the people of that race which, meanwhile, in
the providence of God, has been growing up to be the leading
power on earth. Everywhere the English language seems to be
going forth conquering and to conquer, and whithersoever it
penetrates it carries with it the letters and the social traditions of
a people whose character has been largely moulded by the influ
ences of the Prayer Book. Africans, Indians, Hindoos are to-day,
even in their heathenism, feeling the effects of waves of move
ment which throb from this centre. Men in authority, the world
over, are living out, with more or less of consistency and thorough
ness, those convictions about our duty toward God, and our duty
toward our neighbor, which were early inwrought into their
consciences through the instrumentality of these venerable forms.
Surely no one can afford to think or speak otherwise than most
seriously and carefully with regard to a book which has behind it
a history so worthy, so rich, so pregnant with promise for the
future.

Look first, then, at the power which the Prayer Book draws
from its affiliations with the past. It is a common remark, so
common as to be commonplace, that our liturgy owes its excel
lence to the fact of its not having been the composition or com
pilation of any one man. So much is evident enough upon the
face of it : for a form of worship devised off-hand by an indi
vidual, or even put together by a committee sitting around a
table, could scarcely be wholly satisfactory to any save the maker
or the makers of it. But it is more to the purpose to observe
that not only is the Prayer Book not the result of any one man's
or any one committee's labors ; it is not the work even of any one
generation, or of any one age.

The men who gradually put the Prayer Book into what is sub
stantially its present shape, in the days of Edward VI. and of
Elizabeth, were no more the makers of the Prayer Book than
were the men who, in a later reign, set forth what we call " the

APPENDIX. 215

authorized version " of the Holy Scriptures, the first translators
of the Bible. In both cases the work done was a work of review
and revision. A much more severe review, a vastly more sweep
ing revision in the case of the Prayer Book than in the case of
the Bible, I grant ; but still, mainly a work of review and revision
after all. " Continuity," that characteristic so precious in the eye
of modern science, continuity marked the whole process.

The first Prayer Book of the Reformed Church of England
was a condensed, simplified, and purified combination of formu
laries of worship al read}' in use in the National Church. A cer
tain amount of new material, some of it home made, some of it
drawn from foreign sources, was added ; but the great bulk of
the new service-book had been contained in one or other of the
older manuals. The Reformers did but clip and prune, with that
exquisite taste and judgment which belong by tradition to Eng
lish gardeners, the overgrowth and rank luxuriance of a too
long neglected, "careless-ordered" garden. But whence came
the earlier formularies themselves, from which Cranmer and the
rest quarried the stone for the new building ? — to change the
metaphor as Paul, you remember, does so suddenly from lius
bandry to architecture.* Whence came Missal, and Breviary, and
Book of Offices — the best portions of which were merged in the
English Common Prayer ? From the far past ; the Missal from
those primitive liturgies or communion services, some of which
we trace back with certainty to the later portion of the ante-
Nicene age, and by not unreasonable conjecture to the edge of
apostolic days ; the Breviary or daily prayers from the times
when Christians first took up community life ; the Offices from
periods of uncertain date all along the track of previous Church
history. But what advantage, asks someone full of the modern
spirit, what advantage has the Common Prayer in that it can
trace a genealogy running up through ages of such uncertain
reputation ? Have we not been accustomed to regard those times
as hopelessly corrupt, impenetrably dark, universally supersti
tious ? Ought we not to be mortified, rather than gratified, to
learn that from the pit of so mouldy a past our book of prayer
was digged ? Would not a brand-new liturgy, modernized ex
pressly to meet the needs of nineteenth century culture, with all
* 1 Cor. iii. 9.

216 APPENDIX.

the old English idioms displaced, every rough corner smoothed
and every crooked place made straight — would not that be some
thing far worthier our respect, better entitled to our allegiance,
than this book full of far-away echoes, and faint bell-notes from a
half-forgotten past ?

Yes, if modern man were only modern man and nothing more,
such reasoning would be extremely cogent. But what if modern
man be really, not the mere creature of the century in which he
lives, but the gathered sum and product of all that has preceded
him in history ? What if you and I, from the very fact that
we are living now, have in the dim groundwork of our nature
something that would not have been there had we lived one, three,
twelve hundred years ago? AVhat if there be such a thing as
cumulative acquirement for the race of men, so that a new genera
tion starts with an available capital of associations and ideas of
which the generation last preceding it owned but a part? Take
such words as " feudalism," "the Crusades," " the Renaissance,"
" the printing press," consider how much they mean to us, and
then remember that to a man of the third century they would
have been empty sounds conveying absolutely no meaning.
What all this goes to show is that human nature is a map which
is continually unrolling. To say that the entirety of it lies be
tween the two meridians that bound the particular tract in which
our own little life happens to be cast is stupid. The whole great
past belongs to us — river and island, ocean, forest, continent, all
are ours. You and the man in armor, you and the Venetian
merchant, you and the cowled monk have something, be it ever
so little, something in common. That which was in the fore
ground of their life is now in the background or in the middle
distance of yours. It has become a part of you.*

* Born into life !— man grows

Forth from his parents' stem,
And blends their bloods, as those

Of theirs are blent in them ;
So each new man strikes root into a far foiC-time.
Born into life !— we bring

A bias with us here.
And, when here, each new thing

Affects us we come near ;
To tunes we did not call our being must keep chime.

—Empedocles on Etna.

APPENDIX. 217

•

So, then, if we would Lave a liturgy that shall speak to our
whole nature, and not to a mere fraction of it, it must be a liturgy
full of voices sounding out of the past. There must be reminders
and suggestions in it of all the great epochs of the Church's story.
Yes, echoes even from those very ages which we call dark (per
haps as much because we are in the dark about them as on
account of any special blackness attaching to the times them
selves), some echoes even from them may have a rightful place in
the worship which is to call out responsively all that is in the
heart of the most modern of modern men.

As there were heroes before Agamemnon, so were there holy
and humble men of heart before Cranmer and Luther, yes, and
before Jerome and Augustine. If any cry that ever went up from
any one of them out of the depths of that nature which they share
with us and we with them, if any breath of supplication, any
moan of penitence, any shout of victory that issued from their lips
has made out to survive the noise and tumult of intervening times,
it has earned by its very persistency of tone a prima facie title to
be put into the Prayer Book of to-day.* And this is why a prayer
book may survive the wreck of many systems of theology. A
prayer book holds the utterance of our needs ; a theological system
is the embodiment of our thoughts.

Now our thoughts about things divine are painfully fallible and
liable to change with change of times ; but a want which is
genuinely and entirely human is a permanent fact ; the great
needs of the soul never grow obsolete, and though the language
in which the lips shall clothe the heart's desire may alter, as tastes
alter, yet the substance of the prayer abides, and in some happy
instances the form also abides.

To an eye that looks wisely and lovingly on such sights, there
is the same keen sense of enjoyment in finding here and there in

* li Parliaments, prelates, convocations, synods may order forms of prayer.
They may get speeches to be spoken upward by people on their knees. They
may obtain a juxtaposition in space of curiously tesstllated pieces of Bible and
Prayer Book. But when I speak of the rareness and preciousness of prayers, I
mean such prayers as contain three conditions— permanence, capability of
being really prayed, and universality. Such prayers primates and senates can
no more command than they can order a new Cologne Cathedral or another
epic poem."— The Bishop of Derry'ft Hampton Lecture*, lect iv.

218 APPENDIX.

the Prayer Book suggestions of forgotten customs, reminders of
famous persons and events, that there is in detecting in the
masonry of an old castle or minster tell-tale stones which betray
the different ages, the "sundry times and divers manners" which
the fabric represents. Who, for instance, that has traced the his
tory of that apostolic ordinance, "the kiss of peace," down through
the liturgical changes and revolutions of eighteen hundred years,
can fail to be interested in finding in a single clause of one of the
exhortations of our communion service that which corresponds to
the literal kiss of primitive times, as well as to the petrified symbol
of the original reality, the silver, ivory, or wooden " oscillatory"
of the mediaeval Church ?* So with " Ash- Wednesday," a single
syllable opens a whole chapter of Church history. Again, the
Latin headings to the psalms of the Psalter ; with what an impa
tient gesture can we imagine a spruce reviser brushing these away
as so much trash ! They are not trash, they are way marks that
tell of times when devout men loved those catchwords, as we love

* The following catena is curious :

" Salute one another with an holy kiss."— Rom. xvi. 10.

".Greet ye one another with a kiss of charity."—! Pet. v. 14.

" And let the bishop salute the church, and say : Let the peace of God be with
you all.

" And let the people answer, And with thy spirit.

" And let the deacon say to all, Salute one another with a holy kiss.

" And let the clergy kiss the bishop ; and of the laity, the men the men, and the
women the women, and let the children stand by the Bema."—The Divine
Liturgy of St. Clement (Bretts's Translation, corrected by Neale).

" 1 At Solemn High Mass, the deacon kisses the altar at the same time with the
celebrating priest, by whom he is saluted with the kiss of peace, accompanied by
these words, PAX TECUM." — Rubric of the Roman Missal.

" PAX OB PAXBREDE. A small plate of gold, or silver, or copper-gilt, enam
elled, or piece of carved ivory or wood overlaid with metal, carried round, having
been kissed by the priest, after the Agnus Dei in the Mass, to communicate the
kiss of peace."— Pugin's Glossary.

St. George's Chapel, Windsor. "Item, a fine Pax, silver and gilt enamelled,
with an image of the crucifixion, Mary and John, and having on the top three
crosses, with two shields hanging on either side. Item, a ferial Pax, of plate
of silver gilt, with the image of the Blessed Virgin." — Dugdale's Monasticon
quoted in above Glossary.

" Ye who do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins, and are in love and
chanty with your neighbors, and intend to lead a new life. . . Draw near
with faith, and take this holy sacrament to your comfort." — Shorter Exhor
tation in the Communion Office of the Prayer Book,

APPENDIX. 219

the first lines of our favorite hymns. A few of the headings, such
as " De Profundis" and " Miserere," still possess such associations
for ourselves. There was a time when very many more of them
meant to men now dead and gone as much as " Rock of Ages,"
or " Sun of my Soul," or " Lead, kindly Light," can mean to you
or me.*

Then, too, the monuments of specially revered heroes of the
faith that dot the paths of the Common Prayer, how precious they
are ! We like to think of Ambrose as speaking to us in the lofty
sentences of the Te Deum. It is pleasant to associate Chrysostom
with the prayer that bears his name, and to know that he who
swayed the city's multitude still prized the Master's promise to the
"two or three gathered together" in his name. So also, in our
American Book, Jeremy Taylor, the modern Chrysostom, meets
us in the Office for the Visitation of the Sick, in that solemn
prayer addressed to Him " whose days are without end, and whose
mercies cannot be numbered." All these things help to make
the Prayer Book the large-hearted, wide minded book we all of us
feel it to be, so like a friend whom we revere because he is kindly
in his tone, generous in his judgments, quick to understand us at
every point.

So much for the past of the Prayer Book. We have touched it
in no image-breaking mood, but with reverence. " One genera
tion passeth away, another generation cometh," and it has been
the peculiar felicity of this book to stand

A link among the days, to knit
The generations each to each.

We pass on to consider the present usefulness of the Prayer

* A friend who heard the sermon preached has kindly sent me the following
apt illustrations. They do not, indeed, come from history technically so-called,
but they report the mind of one to whose eye the whole life of the Middle Ages
was as an open book.

"There was now a pause, of which the abbot availed himself by commanding
the brotherhood to raise the solemn chant, De profundis clatnavi." — The
Monastery, chap, xxxvii.

" ' To be a guest in the house where I should command ? ' said the Templar ;
'Never! Chaplains, raise the psalm, Quare fremuei~unt Gentesf Knights,
squires, and followers of the Holy Temple, prepare to follow the banner of
Beau-seant ! ' "—Jvanhoe, chap. xliv.

220 APPENDIX.

Book and the possibility of extending that usefulness in the future.
And now I shall speak wholly as an American to Americans, not
because the destinies of the Prayer Book in the New World are the
more important, though such may in the end turn out to be the
fact, but simply because we are at home here and know our own
wants and wishes, our own liabilities and opportunities, far better
than we can possibly know those of other people. As a Church
we have always tied ourselves too slavishly to English precedent.
Our vine is greatly in danger of continuing merely a potted ivy,
an indoor exotic. The past of the Common Prayer we cannot
disconnect from England, but its present and its future belong in
part at least to us, and it is in this light that we are bound as
American Churchmen to study them. Let us agree, then, that the
usefulness of the book here and now lies largely in the moulding
and formative influence which it is quietly exerting, not only on
the religion of those who use it, but also largely on the religion of
the far greater number who publicly use it not. It has interested
me, as it would interest almost anyone, to learn how many prayer
books our booksellers supply to Christian people who are not
Churchmen. Evidently the book is in use as a private manual
with thousands, who own no open allegiance to the Protestant Epis
copal Church. They keep it on the devotional shelf midway be
tween Thomas a Kempis and the Pilgrim's Progress, finding it a
sort of interpreter of the one to the other, and possessed of a
certain flavor differencing it from both. This is a happy augury
for the future. Much latent heat is generating which shall yet
warm up the dullness of the land. The seed-grain of the Com
mon Prayer will not lie unproductive in those forgotten furrows.
The fitness of such a system of worship as this to counteract some
of the flagrant evils of our popular religion can scarcely fail to
commend it to the minds of those who thus unobserved and, " as
it were in secret," read and ponder. Much of our American
piety, fervid as it is, shows confessedly a feverish, intermittent
character which needs just such a tonic as the Prayer Book pro
vides in what Keble happily called its "sober standard of feeling
in matters of practical religion."

Then, too, there is the constantly increasing interest which it is
such a pleasure to observe among Christians of all names in the

APPENDIX. 221

order of the ritual year, in Christmas and Easter, Lent and Good-
Friday — who can tell how much of this may not be due to the
leavening influence of the Prayer Book, over and above what is
effected by the public services of the Church? "I wonder,"
said a famous revivalist to a friend, a clergyman of our Church,
" I wonder if you Episcopalians know what a good thing you
have in that year of yours. Why don't you use it more ? "

And true enough, why do we not ? That we might learn to do
so was a wish very near to the heart of that holy and true man
•who, if anyone, deserves the title of the saint among our priests,
the late Dr. Muhlenberg, the man who twenty-five years ago headed
the not wholly abortive movement known as the "Memorial."*
One fruit of that movement is perhaps to be seen in the earnest
desire now prevalent throughout the Church to see the scope of
the Prayer Book's influence enlarged. In General Conventions
and Church Congresses nowadays no topic excites greater inter
est than the question how better to adapt the services of the Church
to the present needs and special conditions of all classes of the
population. To be sure, the apparent impotence of the govern-

* So many good things are washed out of men's memory by the lapse of even
a quarter of a century that possibly some even of those who knew all about
the " Memorial " in 1852 may be willing to be reminded what its scope and
purpose were.

The petition was addressed to the bishops "in council," and prayed for the
appointment of a commission to report upon the practicability of making this
Church a central bond of union among the Christian people of America, by
providing for as much freedom in opinion, discipline, and worship as might be
held to be compatible with the essential faith and order of the Gospel.

The desired commission was appointed, Bishops Otey, Doane, A. Potter,
Burgess, and Williams being the members of it. Their Report, subsequently
edited in book form by Bishop Potter, is one of the most valuable documents
of American Church history. The following extract from Bishop Burgess'
portion of the Report will be read with interest by all who ever learned to
revere that theologian for the largeness of his learning, the calmness of his
judgment, and the goodness of his heart. He has been speaking of liturgi
cal changes as contemplated and allowed for by the framers of our ecclesias
tical system. Then he says :

" There would seem to be five contingencies in which the changes, thus
made possible and thus permitted, become also wise and salutary.

"The first Is simply when it is evident that in any respect the liturgy or its
application may be rendered more perfect. To hazard for this result the safety
or unity of the Church may be inexcusable, and the utmost certainty may be

222 APPEXDIX.

ing body to find or furnish any lawful way of relief is a little
discouraging, but it is something to see an almost universal assent
given in terms, to the proposition that relief ought to be had.
What we have to fear is that during the long delay which puts off
the only proper and regular method of giving more elasticity to
the services, there may spring up a generation of Churchmen
from whose minds the idea of obligation to law in matters of
ritual observance will have faded out altogether.

There is a conservatism so conservative that it will stand by and
see a building tumble down rather than lay a sacrilegious hand on
a single stone, will see dam and mill and village all swept away
sooner than lift the flash-boards that keep the superabundant water
from coming safely down. It is among the things possible, that
for lack of readjustment and timely adaptation of the laws regu
lating worship, just such a fate may befall our whole liturgical
fabric.

The plausible theory of " the rubric of common sense, "about
which we have heard so much, a theory good within limitations,
is threatening, by the wholesale application it receives, presently

demanded before a change of this kind shall be practically ventured. But
should it be once established, beyond the smallest doubt, that any addition or
alteration would increase the excellence or the excellent influence of the
liturgy in any degree sufficient to compensate or more than compensate for the
inconveniences incident to all change, it seems as difficult to say that it should
not be adopted by the Church, as to excuse any Christian from adding to his
virtues or his usefulness.

" The other ' contingencies ' recognized are briefly these :

" (2) When in process of time words or regulations have become obsolete
or unsuitable.

" (3) When civil or social changes require ecclesiastical changes.

" (4) When the earnest desire of any respectable number of the members of
the Church, or of persons who are without its communion, is urged in behalf
of some not wholly unreasonable proposal of alteration.

" (5) Wheu error or superstition has been introduced ; when that which was
at first good and healthful has been perverted to the nourishment of falsehood
or wickedness ; or when that which was always evil has found utterance, and
is now revealed in its true character."

The Memorial failed for the reason that the promoters of it had not a clearly
defined notion in their own minds of what they wanted— the secret of many
failures. Out of its ashes there may yet rise, however, " some better thing "
that God has kept in store.

APPENDIX. 223

to annul all other rubrics whatsoever. When, by this process,
uniformity and even similarity shall have been utterly abolished,
when it shall have become impossible for one to know beforehand
of a Sunday whether he is going to mass, or to meeting, or to
church, the inquiry will be in order, What has conservatism of
this sort really conserved ?

" The personal liberty of the officiating clergyman," I fear will
be the only answer ; certainly not, " The liberty of the worship
ping congregation." The straight and only honest way out of our
embarrassment will, some day or other, be found, I dare not believe
very soon, in a careful, loving, fair-minded revision of the formu
laries ; a revision undertaken, not for the purpose of giving victory
to one theologies] party rather than to another, or of changing in
any degree the doctrinal teaching of the Church, but solely and
wholly with a view to enriching, amplifying, and making more
available the liturgical treasures of the book.

"One generation passeth away, another generation cometh."
As we have seen in these words an argument in favor of not break
ing with the past, so let them also speak to us of our plain duty to
the present. True, the great needs are, as I have said, common
alike to all the generations, to those that pass and those that come;
but the lesser needs are variable, and unless we are prepared to take
the ground that because " lesser" they maybe disregarded alto
gether, we are bound, with the changed times, to provide for
the new wants new satisfactions. Take, simply byway of illustra
tion, the need we stand in of an appropriate form of third service
for use on Sundays in city churches, when Morning and Evening
Prayer have been already said according to the prescribed order.

Why have we no such service ?

Simply because no such need existed in our American cities
when the Prayer Book, as we have it now, was taking shape, at
the close of the last century. Just as no form for the administra
tion of Adult Baptism was put into Queen Elizabeth's Prayer
Book, simply because the usage of Infant Baptism was universal
in that day, and there were no unbaptized adults ; but such service
was inserted at the Restoration to meet the need that had sprung
up under the Puritan regime ; so was it unnecessary in Bishop
White's day to provide for a form of service which lias only be-

224 APPENDIX.

come practicable and desirable since modern discovery has en
abled us to make the public streets almost as safe at night as in
the daytime, and church-going as easy by gaslight as by sunlight.

Now it is perfectly possible, of course, under the present order
of things, and with no change in rubric or canon law, for any
clergyman to provide an additional service, to provide it in the
form of a mosaic made up of bits of the liturgy wrenched out
of their proper places, and so irregularly put together that no
stranger among the worshippers can possibly, with the book in
hand, thread his way among its intricacies.

But when we consider how many exquisite gems of devotional
speech there are still left outside the covers of the Prayer Book ;
when we consider how delightful it would be to have back again
the Magnificat, and the Nunc Dimittis, and some of the sweet
versicles of the Evensong of the Church of England ; when we
consider the lamentable mistake already made in our existing
formularies of introducing into Morning and Evening Prayer
identically the same opening sentences, the same General Exhor
tation, the same General Confession, the same Declaration of
Absolution, the same Prayer for the President, and the same
General Thanksgiving — is it not evident that an additional, or, if
you please, an alternative service, composed of material not else
where employed, would be for the worshippers a very great gain?
The repetition which wearies is only the repetition which we feel
need not have been. We never tire of the Collect for Peace any
more than we tire of the sunset. It is in its place, and we always
welcome it. In a perfect liturgy no form of words, except the
Creed, the Doxology, and the Lord's Prayer, would at any time
reappear, but as in arabesque work every square inch of space dif
fers from every other square, so each clause and sentence of the
manual of worship would have a distinctive beauty of its own, to
be looked for precisely there and nowhere else.

This is but one illustration of what may be called a possible
enrichment of our Book of Common Prayer. Impoverishment
under the name of revision may very justly be deprecated, but who
shall find any just fault with an enrichment that is really such?

We must remember that the men who gave us what we now
have were, in their day and generation, the innovators, advocates

APPENDIX. 225

of what the more timid spirits accounted dangerous change. We
cannot, I think, sufficiently admire the courageous foresight of
those Reformers who, at a time when public worship was mainly
associated in men's minds with what went on among a number of
ecclesiastics gathered together at one end of a church, dared to
plant themselves firmly on the principle of "common" prayer,
and to say, Henceforth the worship of the National Church shall
be the worship not of priests alone, but of priests and people too.
What a bold act it was ! The printing-press, remember, although
it had given the impulse to the Reformation, was far from being
at that time the omnipresent thing it is now ; books were scarce;
popular education, as we understand it, was unknown ; there
were no means of supplying service-books to the poorer classes
(no Prayer Book Societies, like this of yours), nor could the books
have been used had they been furnished. And yet in the face of
these seemingly insuperable obstacles, the leaders of religious
thought in the England of that day had the sagacity to plan a
system of worship which should involve participation by the
people in all the acts of divine service, including the administra
tion of the sacraments.

Here was genuine statesmanship applied to the administration
of religion . Those men discerned wisely the signs of their own
times. They saw what the right principle was, they foresaw
what the art of printing was destined in time to accomplish, and
they did a piece of work which has bravely stood the wear and
tear of full three hundred years.

No Churchman questions the wisdom of their innovations now.
Is it hopeless to expect a like quickness of discernment in the
leaders of to-day ? Surely they have eyes to see that a new world
has been born, and that a thousand unexampled demands are
pressing us on every side. If the Prayer Book is not enriched
with a view to meeting those demands, it is not for lack of ma
terials. A Saturday reviewer has tried to fasten on the Church of
England the stigma of being the Church which for the space of
two centuries has not been able to evolve a fresh prayer.

If the reproach were just it would be stinging indeed ; but it
is most cruelly unjust. In the devotional literature of the Angli
canism of the last fifty years, te go no further back, there may be

226 APPENDIX.

found prayers fully equal in compass of thought and depth of
feeling to any of those that are already in public use. Not to
single out too many instances, it may suffice to mention the
prayers appended to the book of Ancient Collects edited a few
years since by a distinguished Oxford scholar. The clergy are
acquainted with them, and know how beautiful they are. Why
should not the whole Church enjoy the happiness of using them? *
Why is there not the same propriety in our garnering the devo-
votional harvest of the three hundred years last past that there
was in the Reformers garnering the harvest of five times three
hundred years ?

"One generation passeth away, another generation cometh."
I have spoken of the present and the past, what now of the

* Ancient Collects and Other Prayers selected for Devotional Use from
Various Rituals. By William Bright, M. A. J. H. & Jas. Parker, Oxford and
London.

From. the Appendix I take the following illustrations of the statement ven
tured above :

"For Guidance. — O God, by whom the meek are guided in judgment, and
light riseth up in darkness for the godly ; grant us in all our doubts and un
certainties the grace to ask what thou wouldest have us to do ; that the Spirit
of wisdom may save us from all false choices, and that in thy light we may see
light, and in thy straight path may not stumble : through Jesus Christ our
Lord.

" For those who live in sin. — Have mercy, O compassionate Father, on all who
are hardened through the deceitfulness of sin ; vouchsafe them grace to come
to themselves, the will and power to return to thee, and the loving welcome of
thy forgiveness through Jesus Christ our Lord.

" For all who do the work of the Church.— O Lord, without whom our labor
is but lost, and with whom thy little ones go forth as the mighty, be present
to all works in thy Church which are undertaken according to thy will, and
grant to thy laborers a pure intention, patient faith, sufficient success upon
earth, and the bliss of serving thee in heaven, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

" For grace to ppeak the Truth in love. — O Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who
earnest not to strive nor cry, but to let thy words fall as the drops that water
the earth : grant all who contend for the faith once delivered, never to injure
it by clamor and impatience, but speaking thy precious truth in love, so to pre
sent it that it may be loved, and that men may see in it thy goodness and thy
beauty : who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost, one God,
world without end."

Both as regards devotional flavor and literary beauty these prayers will, I feel
sure, be judged worthy, by such as will read them more than once, to stand by
the side certainly of many of the collects already in the Prayer Book.

APPENDIX. 227

future ? We know that all things come to an end. What destiny
awaits the book to which our evening thoughts have been given ?
That is a path not open to our tread. The cloudy curtain screens
the threshold of it. Still we may listen and imagine that we hear
sounds. What if such a voice as this were to come to us from
the distance of a hundred years hence — a voice tinged with sad
ness, and carrying just the least suggestion of reproach ? " Our
fathers," the voice says, "in the last quarter of the last century,
forfeited a golden opportunity. It was a time of reconstruction
in the State, social life was taking on the form it was destined
long to retain, a great war had come to an end and its results were
being registered, all things were fluent. Moreover, there hap
pened, just then, to be an almost unparalleled lull in the strife of
religious parties ; men were more disposed than usual to agree ;
the interest in liturgical research was at its greatest, and scholars
knew and cared more than they have ever done since about the
history and the structure of forms of prayer. Nevertheless,
timid councils prevailed ; nothing was done with a view to better
adapting the system to the needs of society, and the hope that the
Church might cease to wear the dimensions of a sect, and might
become the chosen home of a great people, died unrealized. We
struggle on, a half-hearted company, and try to live upon the
high traditions, the sweet memories of our past."

God forbid, my friends, that the dismal prophecy come true !
We will not believe it. But what, you ask, is the pathway to any
such betterment as I have ventured roughly to sketch to-night ?
I will not attempt to map it, but I feel very confident which way
it does not run. I am sure it does not run through the region of
disaffection, complaint, threatening, restlessness, petulance, or
secession. Mere fretfulness never carries its points. No, the
true way to better things is always to begin by holding on man
fully to that which we already are convinced is good. The best
restorers of old fabrics are those who work with affectionate
loyalty as nearly as possible on the lines of the first builders,
averse to any change which is made merely for change's sake, not
so anxious to modernize as to restore, and yet always awake to
the fact that what they have been set to do is to make the building
once more what it was first meant to be, a practicable shelter.

THE OUTCOME OF REVISION— A SERMON.*

"... We are the servants of the God of heaven and earth, and build the
house that was builded these many years ago."— Ezra v. 11.

THIS was the reply of the rebuilders of Jerusalem to certain
critical lookers-on who would fain be informed by what authority
a picturesque ruin was disturbed. It is a serviceable answer still.
There are always those to whom the activity of the Christian
Church is a standing puzzle. Religion, or at any rate revealed
religion, having, as they think, received its death-blow, the un
mistakable signs of life which, from time to time, it manifests
tafce on almost the character of a personal affront. They resent
them. What right have these Christians to be showing such a
lively interest in their vanquished faith? they ask. What busi
ness have they to be holding councils, and laying plans, and act
ing as if they had some high and splendid effort in hand ? Are
they such fools as to imagine that they can reconstruct what has
so evidently tumbled into ruin ?

But the wonderful thing about this great building enterprise
known as the kingdom of God is that, from the day when
the corner-stone was laid to this day, the workmen on the walls
have never seemed to know what it meant to be discouraged. In
the face of taunt and rebuff and disappointment, they have kept
on saying to their critics : " We are the servants of the God of
heaven and earth, and build the house that was builded these many
years ago." This is just what the Church Council which has
been holding its sessions in Baltimore during the last three weeks
has to say for itself. Its task has been an architectural task. Ac
cording to its lights, it has been at work upon the walls of the
city of God. Let me give you, as my habit has been under similar
circumstances in the past, some account of its doings.

* Preached in Grace Church, N. Y., on the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity,
that being the Sunday next following the adjournment of the General Con
vention of 1892.

228

AFPKNDIX. 229

The General Convention of 1892 will be memorable in our
ecclesiastical annals for having closed one question of grave mo
ment only to open a kindred one of still larger reach. The
question closed was the question of liturgical revision ; the ques
tion opened is the question of constitutional revision. I should
like to speak to you this morning retrospectively of the one, and
prospectively of the other.

It is now about twenty years since the question of modifying,
to some extent, the methods of our public worship began to be
mooted.

While it was acknowledged that the need was greater in the
mother country than here, many of the repetitions and superflui
ties of the English Church service having been set aside by Bishop
White and his compeers in the American Revision of 1789, it was
felt that further improvements were still possible, and that the
time had fully come for making them. Since the beginning of
the so-called "tractarian movement" in the Church of England a
great deal of valuable liturgical material had been accumulating,
and it was discerned that if ever the fruits of the scholarship of
such men :.:, Palmer and Xeale and Maskell and Bright were to be
garnered the harvest-day had arrived. To the question often
asked wliy it would not have been wiser to wait until the Church
of England had led the way and set the pattern, the answer is that
the hands of the Church of England were tied, as they have been
tied these many years past, and as they may continue to be tied,
for aught we know to the contrary, for many years to come. The
Church of England cannot touch her own Prayer Book, whether
to mend or to mar it, except with the consent of that very mixed
body, the House of Commons — a consent she is naturally and
properly most loth to ask. Immersed in a veritable ocean of accu
mulated liturgical material, she is as helpless as Tantalus to
moisten her lips with so much as a single drop. It was seen that
this fact laid upon us American Churchmen a responsibility as
urgent as it was unique, viz., the responsibility of doing what wo
could to meet the devotional needs of present-day Christendom,
not only for our own advantage, but with a view to being ulti
mately of service to our Anglican brethren across the sea. An

230 APPENDIX.

experiment of the greatest interest, which for them was a sheer
impossibility, it lay open to us to try. After various abortive
attempts had come to nought, a beginning was at length made in
the General Convention of 1880, a joint committee of bishops and
deputies being then appointed to consider whether, in view of the
fact that this Church was soon to enter upon the second century
of its organized existence in America, the changed condition of the
national life did not demand certain alterations in the Book of
Common Prayer in the direction of liturgical enrichment and in
creased flexibility of use.

Few were of the opinion at the time that anything definite
would come of the deliberations of this committee, and the fact,
never before publicly stated till this moment, that of the deputies
appointed to serve upon it the greater number were men who had
not voted in favor of the measure, makes it all the more interesting
to remember that the report, when brought in at Philadelphia three
years later, was signed by every member of the committee then
living. This Philadelphia report recommended very numerous
changes in the direction both of " flexibility " and " enrichment,"
and by far the greater number of the recommendations met with
the approval of the convention. There is, however, a very wise
provision of our Church constitution, a provision strikingly char
acteristic of the Anglo-Saxon mind, which, by way of making
allowance for second thought, requires that liturgical changes,
before [being finally adopted, shall run the gauntlet of two suc
cessive conventions. Much was accepted at Philadelphia ; it
remained to be seen how much would pass the ordeal of its second
reading at Chicago three years later.

Into the war of words waged over the subject during that inter
val period, I have neither the time nor the disposition to carry
you. The three years, while they gave opportunity for reaction,
also allowed space for counter-reaction ; so that when, at last, the
question came once more before the Church in council assem
bled whether the work done at Philadelphia should be approved
or disallowed, men's minds had sufficiently recovered balance to
permit of their exercising discrimination. Accordingly in 1886
some things were rejected, some adopted, and some remanded for
further revision. But why should I confuse your minds by an

APPENDIX. 231

attempt to tell in detail the whole story of the movement ? Xo
matter how clear I might make the narrative it would be difficult
to follow it, for in the progress of the work there have been sur
prises many, successes and reverses not a few ; enough that, at
last, the long labor is ended and in this Columbian year the ship
comes into port.

As to results, their number and their quality, opinions will of
course differ. In connection with this, as with all similar under
takings, there are many to cry : " Who will show us any good ? "
Certainly nothing that could be called a radical change has been
brought to pass ; but then, is there any reason to suppose that
radical changes were either sought or desired by those who have
been active in the movement ? Certain distinct and indisputable
gains may be counted up. The recovery of the great Gospel
hymns come under this head . There are some of us who think
that only to have succeeded in replacing the Magnificat and the
Nunc Dimittis in the Evening Prayer is of itself a sufficient reward
for years of effort, but this is only a small part of our harvest.
The new opening sentences for Morning and Evening Prayer,
which have so " adorned and beautified " our observance of great
festivals, the remodelling of the Ash-Wednesday service, the re
covered Feast of the Transfiguration, the various provisions for
adapting the Church's worship to the exigencies of times and sea
sons, the increased freedom in the use of the Psalter, all these go
to make up an aggregate of betterment the measure of which will
be more fully understood as time goes on. " Parturiunt monies "
is an easy verdict to pronounce ; it remains to be proved whether
in this case it is a just one to render. If there are some (as doubt
less some there are) who hold that the sample book presented at
Philadelphia in 1883, faulty as it confessedly was, is still, all
things considered, a better book for American needs than the
standard finally adopted at Baltimore, week before last, if there
are some who deeply regret the failure to include among our
special offices one for the burial of little children, and among our
prayers intercessions for the country, for the families of the land,
for schools of good learning, for employers and those whom they
employ, together with many other forms of supplication gathered
from the wide field of English liturgiology — if, I say, there are

232 APPENDIX.

some who are of this mind they must comfort themselves with the
reflection that, after all, they are a minority, that the greater
number of those upon whom rested the responsibility of de
cision did not wish for these additions, and that the things which
finally found acceptance were the things unanimously desired.
For, when we think of it, this is perhaps the very best feature of
the whole thing, looked at in its length and breadth, that there is
no defeated party, no body of people who feel that they have a
right to fret and sulk because unpalatable changes have been
forced upon them by narrow majorities. It is a remarkable fact,
that of the many scores of alterations effected, it can be truly said
that, with rare, very rare exceptions, they found, when it came to
the decisive vote, what was practically a unanimous consent.
They were things that everybody wanted.

As to the annoyance and vexation experienced by worshippers
during the years the revision has been in progress, perhaps the
very best thing that can be done, now that the end is so near at
hand, will be to forget all about it. In a few months, at the
furthest, the Prayer Book, in its complete form, will be available
for purchase and use, and the hybrid copies which have been so
long in circulation, to the scandal of people of fastidious taste, will
quickly vanish away. Meanwhile, it is interesting to know that
all through this stretch of years while the Prayer Book has been
" in solution," as some have been fond of phrasing it, the Episco
pal Church has exhibited a rate of growth quite unparalleled in its
history.

Of course nobody can say with certainty what has caused the in
crease. But it is at least conceivable that among the accelerating
forces has been this very work of liturgical revision. People at
large have been made aware that this Church was honestly en
deavoring to adapt its system of worship to the needs of our time
and country ; and the mere fact of their seeing this to be the case
has served to allay prejudice and to foster a spirit of inquiry.
Finding us disposed to relax something of our rigidity, they, on
their part, have been first attracted, then conciliated, and finally
completely won.

I caunot leave this subject without paying a personal tribute to
a prelate but for whose aid in the House of which he is a dis-

APPENDIX. 233

tinguished ornament, liturgical revision would, humanly speak
ing, have long ago come to nought. To the fearlessness, the
patience, the kindly temper, and the resolute purpose of William
Croswell Doane, Bishop of Albany, this Church for these results
stands deeply and lastingly indebted. When others' courage
failed them, he stood firm ; when friends and colleagues were
counselling retreat, and under their breath were whispering
"Fiasco !" and " Collapse !" his spirit never faltered. He has
been true to a great purpose, at the cost of obloquy sometimes,
and to the detriment even of old friendships. Separated from
him by a dozen shades of theological opinion and by as many
degrees of ecclesiastical bias, I render him here and now that
homage of grateful appreciation which every Churchman owes
him.

So much for the ship that has dropped anchor. I have left my
self but a few moments in which to say God-speed to the other
craft which is even now sliding down the ways, ready for the
great deep. Put perhaps it is just as well. History is always a
safer line to enter upon than prophecy ; and were I to say all
that is in my mind and heart as to the possibilities of this new
venture of faith on the Church's part, constitutional revision, I
might be betrayed into expressions of hopefulness which would
strike most of you as overwrought.

Suffice it to say, that never since the Reformation of Religion
in the sixteenth century has a fairer prospect been opened to the
Church of our affections than is opened to her to-day. No in
terpretation of the divine purpose with respect to this broad land
wre name America has one-half so much of likelihood as that
which makes our country the predestined building plot for the
Church of the Reconciliation.

All signs point that way. To us, if we have but the eyes to see
it, there falls, not through any merit of our own, but by the acci
dent, if it be right to use that word, by the accident of historical
association, the opportunity of leadership.

It is possible for us, at this crisis of our destiny, so to mould our
organic law that we shall be brought into sympathetic contact
with hundreds of thousands of our fellow-countrymen who wor
ship the same God, hold the same faith, love the same Christ. On

234

APPENDIX.

the other hand, it is possible for us so to fence ourselves off from
this huge family of our fellow-believers as to secure for our lasting
heritage only the cold privileges of a proud and selfish isolation.
There could be no real catholicity in such a choice as that.

We have the opportunity of growing into a great and compre
hensive Church. We have the opportunity of dwindling into a
self-conscious, self -conceited, and unsympathetic sect. Which
shall it be ? With those to whom, under God, the remoulding of
our organic law has been intrusted it largely rests to say.

APPENDIX.

235

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